


Big Lie, Small World

by firefly124



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F, mentions of past Lisa/Dean, mentions of past canon character death, spnmegabang 2018, spoilers through near the end of S12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 09:16:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 71,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16194575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefly124/pseuds/firefly124
Summary: When Charlie washes up on the shores of Lake Michigan, two years into the future no less, she heads for the nearest source of possible answers she can think of. She didn't plan on meeting a gorgeous yoga teacher there, but she isn't about to question her luck. The town actually has a missing person problem, but it started before Charlie arrived, so it couldn't be connected. Right?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to my beta, ubiquirk, for helping to lick this into shape.
> 
> Please go check out threshie's [art masterpost](http://threshasketch.tumblr.com/post/178721973293) and give her lots of love for her amazing work! It's been a treat working together on this.
> 
> Title is from the Sting song by the same name.

 

"What the hell did you do, Sam?" Charlie demanded into the phone.

"Who the hell is this?" he asked, angry.

And she supposed she could get that. Really. But how exactly was she supposed to get him past this over the phone?

"Look, you want to do all the tests, fine, but seriously, why would anyone ..." she realized she was talking to a dead line "... pretend to be me?"

She glared at the pay-as-you-go phone as if it were at fault when, really, she was mostly just glad she'd been able to connect it to her cloud (and that her cloud account was still up, go her for setting up an infinite auto-pay loop – hacking back into life was so much easier when you left yourself back doors like that). Hell, she was glad that at least one of the numbers she had for Sam still worked. She hadn't tried any of Dean's yet because, well, who knew what the hell had happened with him in the past two years? With a sigh, she tapped the call icon again.

"This is not funny, whoever you are," Sam answered.

"Believe me, I know," she retorted, "because if you frakkin' sold your soul for this, I'm going to have to hurt you."

Silence. She was almost certain he'd hung up again.

"Charlie?" There was an echo that told her he'd put her on speakerphone.

"What's up, bitches?" she asked, forcing a weak grin onto her face as if they could see it. She leaned back against the rental car.

"Let's say we believe you're you," Sam said.

"Not that we do," Dean put in.

"What ...? How ...?"

"Kinda what I've been asking you," she said, her heart sinking. Not that she wanted either of them to have done something stupid, but if they weren't responsible for this, who or what was?

"Where are you?" Dean asked.

"Somewhere between Kellogg’s Country and Kalamazoo."

"We're on our way," Sam said.

"What? No! You're probably in the middle of a case, right?"

"First of all, no, we're not," Dean said. "Second of all, whether you're really Charlie or something that wants us to think you're Charlie, _you_ just became our case."

"Unless it's a trap, Ackbar," she snapped. She took a breath. "Look, I know I can't stop you if you're determined, but seriously, even if it is me... I'm me... it can still be a trap. If _you_ don't know what's going on and _I_ don't know what's going on, then something weird is _definitely_ going on."

"Dude, I'm pretty sure that's actually Charlie," Sam said. "Still, when have you ever known us to take good advice?"

"Never," she admitted with a sigh. "Look, I have an idea or two I want to check out." She glanced at the building in front of her. The cars in the lot had started to thin out, but the store still looked kind of closed. "I'm kind of limited at the moment, 'cause it's not like I exactly showed up with much to work with. So maybe you two could poke around a bit first and see if there's any weird stuff going on for the last few days between here and Benton Harbor, stuff that wouldn't make the print news? My usual sources seem to be a little out of date."

“Benton Harbor?” Sam asked.

“That’s where I woke up. And no, I have no clue why Benton Harbor. Or Michigan. I mean, if it’d been near Moondoor, that’d be one thing, but… .”

"Yeah, okay," Sam said. The speakerphone echo was gone.

"Dean's already loading up the car, isn't he?"

"Yup."

Of course he was. That did leave one question.

"Is he...?"

"The Mark is gone," Sam said. He took a deep breath and sighed. "If you're really you, we've got a lot to catch up on."

That was blatantly obvious, especially considering Sam didn't sound completely happy about Dean being cured. Meanwhile, though, someone else had just exited the shop and got into the second-to-last car in the lot. "Hey, if you're coming up here anyway, you guys didn't happen to hang onto my Gremlin, did you?"

They’d picked it up from the airport for her when she’d gone to Italy after the _Book of the Damned_ , but there hadn’t really been time to get it back since then. Plus, she’d had to keep cycling through cars to stay clear of those Styne d-bags.

"Actually, it's right next to Dorothy's bike," Sam replied. "But, uh, I'm not sure I'll exactly be able to fit behind the wheel."

"That and I suppose I could just be trying to split you two up. Got it."

"Sorry."

Charlie shrugged. It would’ve been nice to have it back. Something that was actually hers, not to mention nicely equipped for both hunting and hacking. But she could see why they wouldn’t do it. Besides, if she weren’t herself, they’d be giving it to a monster, so, yeah. "See you when you get here."

She ended the call and climbed the stairs to the metaphysical shop, sliding her hand along the ornate wooden railing. That one last car (besides her “rental”) had to belong to the owner or manager or something, right? The symbols on the window, a mix of Sanskrit and Enochian alongside the more typical Goddess spirals and pentagrams made it clear Charlie should be able to find what she needed here. That squared with what she remembered Moondoor peeps saying about it, which was why she’d headed here. She hoped they also meant that whoever was still in there wouldn't make her wait until whatever passed for normal business hours. Which weren't posted. That was odd.

Charlie peered inside and saw a shadowy figure moving around. Silhouette said woman. Not bothering to turn on the lights said super-familiar with the layout, because while it wasn't exactly dark, the sunlight was throwing some major shadows around.

 

~*~

A chime rang out through the silent room.

"Bring your attention back slowly. Feel the mat beneath your body and the wooden floor beneath that. Take a deep breath and smell the lilacs from outside. Wiggle your fingers and toes." Lisa looked out over the room. Maisy looked like she might have actually fallen asleep... no, wait... now she was moving. "Open your eyes. Bend your knees and roll onto your side, and use your hands to press yourself slowly up into a seated position."

All of them followed at various paces. Once they were all sitting up, some with their legs crossed (or trying to cross) into lotus position but most just folded into the more relaxed "easy pose," she continued, "Bring your hands to your heart and close your eyes again. Remember the intention you set for yourself at the start of your practice today. Silently repeat it again. And then, if you wish, join me in chanting 'Om.'"

Most joined in, some didn't, but the energy of the room was peacefully awake. With a final affirmation, Lisa bowed to each of them in turn and then stood to begin packing up her gear, knowing the students would follow suit.

One by one they rolled up their mats. The ones who used the store's mats tucked them away in the shelf set up for them, a smattering of jewel tones against IKEA white. The few who brought their own stuffed them into carry bags along with their water bottles and, in some cases, cushions.

As Lisa thumbed off the meditation app on her phone, handy thing that kept her from having to watch the clock, Maisy came up to her.

"Hey," she said, "can I ask you a question?"

"Of course," Lisa replied.

"That thing you have us do, the intention?"

"Yes?"

"I know you said it's important to keep it positive." Maisy shuffled her feet and looked away, her braids swinging a little with the movement. "And present tense. But it feels like I'm lying to myself sometimes."

Lisa took a breath and let it out slowly. She knew that feeling well. "That's completely normal. Remember, it's an intention. By keeping it positive, you keep the focus on what you do want rather than what you don't. And by stating it in the present tense, you invite it into the present instead of keeping it in the future."

"I know, it's just ..."

_I am mindful and aware every minute of every day._

"If it feels too big," Lisa said, "you could try setting something that feels more attainable. Like, nobody is going to suddenly be completely calm and graceful all the time, right?"

Maisy nodded.

"So, let's say that's your big goal. Maybe a step to get there is taking a breath before you speak when your boss says something ridiculous."

Maisy chuckled. "Yeah, that'd probably be a good start. So something like 'I breathe in calm when I want to yell'?"

"Or maybe 'I breathe peace into my workplace,'" Lisa suggested with a smile. "Keep the yelling out altogether, but keep it specific enough for what you're wanting to work on."

_I dwell in the present moment._

"I'll try that," Maisy said with a nod.

Lisa gave her a nod in reply and, when Maisy shouldered her bag and headed out, Lisa finished packing up her own gear and gave the room a final look.

The window was still open a crack, letting in the cool morning air and the aroma of lilacs or something from nearby. Lisa slid it shut and snicked the lock into place, not that anyone would bother climbing up to the second floor to break into a room full of yoga mats. Amy would probably laugh at her, but Lisa just could not bring herself to leave the room (any room) less than secure. Especially with all that had been going on lately. Nobody had vanished from a locked room, so locked rooms seemed like a good idea. She drew her fingertips along the windowsill with the vague feeling that she was forgetting something.

Shrugging that off, Lisa grabbed her own bag and headed out, locking the door to the practice room behind her before heading downstairs. The shop was dark-ish, though the windows let in enough sunlight to keep the shelves of herbs and crystals from being outright creepy. That was a good thing, because there was someone peering through the door. Probably an antsy customer, but it was startling anyway. Regular customers knew that Changes Unlimited didn't open until eleven, even though the morning yoga classes used the space upstairs. So it was a rare thing that Lisa had to shoo anyone away, but apparently she was going to have to this morning.

She had to steel herself before approaching the door though. What if it wasn’t a customer? Robbers weren’t big on just waiting at the door, though, and all the weird stuff that had been going on tended to happen at night. Lisa took a steadying breath and let it out slowly.

_I dwell in the present moment._

Lisa opened the door to a very earnest redhead with a curly bob.

"Hey, there," she said. "The store doesn't actually open until eleven. And if you were here for the yoga class, we just finished, though there's another class at noon.”

"Oh!" the redhead exclaimed. She tapped her fingers along some of the designs in the window. "Sorry. I thought maybe you were getting ready to open up."

"No, sorry." Lisa shook her head and smiled. "You might want to go grab a bite or something. Brigid pretty much gets here right before eleven, so you've got a couple of hours to kill."

"Right." The redhead looked disappointed at first, but then her eyes grew curious. "Got any suggestions where to go?"

"Well, there's Gus' place right down the road. It's a pretty basic diner, but he does a great breakfast. Or you could try Biggerson's, but I don't know if they do breakfast during the week or just on the weekends."

"That's new," the other woman said. "I didn't realize they did breakfast at all."

That... wasn't actually all that new. They had started doing weekend buffet breakfasts almost two years ago. No point potentially offending a customer by implying she'd been living under a rock, though.

"I think I'll try Gus'," the redhead continued. "Diner food sounds like a good fit to the way this morning is shaping up."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Lisa asked.

"Well, I'm alive, so I think I'll go with good," the other woman replied. Then she extended her hand. "I'm Charlie, by the way."

"Lisa. Nice to meet you. And... good attitude."

And it was nice to meet her. Charlie had a pleasant smile, and Lisa had a feeling she'd be fun to talk to.

"So, you want to show me the way to Gus'?" Charlie asked. "My treat if you haven't already had breakfast."

"I wish I could. I've got some things I really need to do, though." No, none of it was urgent, but she really did need to get things finalized for Ben's weekend at the University of Michigan. He was leaving in just two days! And she only had a couple of hours before she had to be back here for the lunchtime class.

"I know how that goes," Charlie replied.

Was she... disappointed?

"Rain check?" Lisa asked almost in spite of herself. "I mean, you can find Gus' easily enough. Just take a left out of the lot and it's like a block away on the left."

"Sure." Charlie gave her a confused smile. "Not sure how long I'll be in town, but if I'm still here tomorrow, feel free to cash that rain check in."

"Sounds like a plan," Lisa said with a chuckle.

 

~*~

Gus' was every bit as good as Lisa had said. It didn't look like much: a converted trailer with 1950s-style booths and counter stools, most of which were in dire need of re-upholstering, and enough chrome for two sports cars. The eggs tasted so fresh, Charlie thought she should be able to hear the chickens that laid them clucking out back. The toast was not too dark, not too soft. The coffee was the stuff dreams were made of, just bitter enough to need a little milk and sugar. All in all, Charlie thought this might actually be the best breakfast she'd had in her life.

That could, of course, have something to do with being dead for the last two years.

It was weird, though. The last time she'd died (a phrase she'd never have believed that she would even think), she'd thought it was a dream. She'd been at Christmas dinner with her parents. That memory had stuck and stuck hard, because every time she'd dreamed it after that, it had been with that extra bit of intensity that no memory from her actual childhood ever had, in dreams or otherwise.

This time? Not so much. She remembered standing off against that Styne d-bag, who she really ought to have been able to take, extra parts or not. And then she was waking up on a beach. In Benton Harbor, Michigan, of all places. Same clothes, though fortunately not as bloody as they should have been, no phone, and her credit cards expired because it was apparently two years later. Good thing that hadn’t been enough to hold her back for long.

"Refill?" the blonde waitress asked, shaking the pot of caffeinated goodness so that it sloshed a little.

"Yes, please." Charlie nudged her mug over and smiled up at the woman. She was pretty, probably in her late thirties, early forties. Wedding band. "Thanks."

Lisa, on the other hand, was probably about her age, maybe a couple of years older. No wedding band, always a plus. And while it was entirely possible that Charlie was off her game, what with the being dead for two years and all, still, she'd seemed potentially interested. Not that Charlie would be hanging around long, but if she did see Lisa again, she wouldn't complain. At all.

Meanwhile, she was letting her new phone rest and recharge while she read the hard-copy newspaper. Most of it was probably same-old, same-old to the average person. But seriously, how the hell had they elected that washed-up reality tv star to the White House? She shuddered. True, he'd been talking about running, she vaguely remembered, but people actually _voted_ for him? It reminded her vaguely of that one unpublished Carver Edlund book, when the president of zombie!America was Sarah Palin. Charlie had always thought it was kind of debatable, in a chicken-and-egg sort of a way, whether the shit had hit the fan and people voted her in because they were too busy with the zombies or whether they voted her in and the shit hit the fan, including zombies.

This wasn't zombie!America, was it? It didn't look like it, but then, that was the deal with the Croatoan thing. They didn't look like zombies, just acted like them. She'd have to ask when the boys got here. Anyway, nothing in the paper hinted at zombies, which was a plus. But she had just "woken up" in the future, so it was worth keeping in mind that none of this might be real. She didn't know what motive there would be for that, nor what angel would bother (it didn't seem like Castiel's style, and Dean had killed that Zachariah d-bag) or who else would have that kind of juice.

Well, she had one idea who might have that kind of juice and a warped interest in her. She just wasn't sure what the motive would be.

Once she got into the local news, she did notice there had been a few disappearances in the area. Nothing she'd normally flag as a potential case that might be totally mundane, but throw in someone returning from the dead and... maybe? The backstory said that the earlier cases went back a couple of weeks, though. Also, nothing particularly spooky-sounding. So probably not related. Still possibly a case. She decided she’d check it out once she dealt with whatever had brought her back.

Not what she was here for, though. Unless, of course, it turned out to be related, timeline or no timeline. For now, all she was doing was killing time until she could go back to the shop and either a) get a reading from someone who knew what was what or b) pick up some supplies to detect what kind of magic she had lingering on her. This place was supposed to be legit according to the Moondoor gossip back in the day, and the Enochian in the window seemed to back that up.

Taking another sip of her cooling coffee, Charlie turned the page to the editorials. Apparently, she wasn't the only one who thought there could be something off with the disappearances. It was surprising that they'd actually run a letter to the editor blaming the Michigan Dogman, but it did make for an interesting read. The writer wasn't claiming to be an eyewitness, or anything, though. Didn't even seem to be attached to any of the victims. So it was probably just a crank, just like that one she'd run into a while back (okay, more than a while) blaming the Jersey Devil for everything. Not a lead, just a dead end. (Though the weekend in Atlantic City had been worth the trip, if only for that one Rockette type. Swoon.)

Nothing else useful in the editorials, though clearly there were people who didn't think things were going all that great in the world. Shocker.

She sighed and checked her watch. Still plenty of time to kill. She borrowed a pencil from the waitress and flipped to the crossword.

 

~*~

There wasn't really that much for Lisa to do to get Ben's weekend plans finalized, she realized. He already had a dorm slot booked. He was riding with some friends, so transportation was all set. In fact, the only thing that Lisa had really needed to do was just re-check all the confirmations for the eightieth time for her own peace of mind and shuffle the laundry from machine to machine and fold what was already dry. If she got that out of the way quickly enough, she might even have some time to look into that rental space she’d seen advertised on the way home. Over a hardware store wasn’t where you’d usually expect to find a yoga studio, but maybe it would be a place to start.

She dragged the laundry basket into the living room and clicked the tv on to some random morning show and set up her folding space. After a minute, she decided she wasn't in the mood to watch whatever inane interviews were lined up for today, so she clicked off the tv, plopped her phone into its speaker, and started her favorite playlist.

A dance beat definitely made chores go faster.

Her mind wandered as she worked. Maisy's question this morning wasn't completely surprising. She'd been resistant to the idea of setting an intention from the start. Still, it was something Lisa found valuable enough to keep. Figuring out what kind of intention would work best was part of the process, after all.

_I dwell in the present moment._

It wasn't like anyone really had to do it if they didn't want to. Lisa would cue them to, but she never asked them to share, so no one would ever know if they just spent those moments reviewing their to-do list for the day. She supposed there could be some value to that, too. They had shared their _sankalpas_ in the training where she'd learned to add this to her practice. But that had felt extremely revealing. Had _been_ extremely revealing, as she'd ended up sharing the story behind her initial intention, or at least what she knew of it.

_I am mindful and aware every minute of every day._

What she'd ended up with was on the one hand very generic but on the other hand much more realistic. Besides, dwelling in the present moment was kind of a yoga thing anyway, every bit as much as it was a Zen thing.

The point was, it was one thing to work through that process with a group of your peers that you'd been studying with for a couple of years. Some of them even longer. They'd known her before the incident and had tried to help her fill in some of the gaps where they could. It hadn't really helped her remember anything, but it had helped her feel less alone. It would be completely different to share stuff like that with people who just happened to be in your before-work yoga class, so, she didn’t ask it of them.

Lisa gathered up Ben's folded clothes and brought them into his room. She resisted the urge to stuff them into his drawers, leaving them instead piled on his bed. Next year, he'd be doing all this himself. Come summertime, he should probably start using the machines for himself, actually. It wasn't like he was going to break them. And if he did, he could probably fix them anyway.

The dryer buzzed as she walked back towards the kitchen, and so she filled the empty basket with her own clothes. Mostly work stuff, though she was incredibly glad someone had invented yoga pants that looked almost like something you could pass off as business casual. She mostly wore those to the hospital, because it made her feel more professional, rather than showing up looking like a gym rat to a building full of people in starched-looking lab coats and color-coded scrubs.

This morning, though, she did look like a gym rat. That worked well enough for a 7am yoga class. A few of her students would wear the almost-business-casual type of pants and just change their top after class (or throw a sweater over their top from class), but most went for full-on sweatpants. While Lisa didn't usually go quite that far, the yoga pants she was still wearing were pretty old, and they looked it. Since it was still early spring and pretty nippy in the morning, though, she did throw an old band sweatshirt on over her workout top when she wasn't actively teaching. She wasn't even sure why she owned it. Led Zeppelin was cool, she supposed, but not really her thing. Maybe it had been Matt's, though she couldn't quite picture him wearing it. It was comfortable, though, and very warm, which was all that mattered.

Why was she even thinking about this? As long as she looked the part of a yoga teacher during class, what did she care that she probably looked a mess with this sweatshirt on? There wasn't anyone she needed to impress, after all. Was there?

She was relieved when the phone rang to distract her.

"Dana! What's up?"

"A girl can't call her sister without an ulterior motive?"

Lisa rolled her eyes. "You always have an ulterior motive."

Dana had been trying to get Lisa to move back to Indiana ever since the accident-that-was-actually-a-home-invasion. And Lisa got that. Really, she did. She definitely hadn't stayed at the house Matt had been killed in. But she liked it here. She didn't remember what had possessed her to move to Michigan in the first place, but the deal she had with Changes worked out really well for a primary teaching gig, and she really liked the hospital where she was teaching yoga to pregnant women on Saturday mornings.

Sure, she wanted her own studio, and she could theoretically start that anywhere. But if Ben did end up going to UMich Ann Arbor, Lisa didn't want to be even further away. A couple of hours was fine. He could come home easily enough for holidays and maybe even the occasional weekend. More than that and she'd be lucky to see him twice a year.

"Okay, fine.” Dana sighed dramatically into the phone. “I wanted to make sure you and Ben are still coming for Easter."

"Of course." That was so obviously not Dana's real question. "Why wouldn't we?"

"Well, you might have met someone that wants you to have Easter dinner with _their_ family."

And there it was.

"I haven't met anyone." Lisa practically winced as she said it.

"You sure about that?" Dana asked. "Because I was just fishing, but you actually don't sound all that sure."

That was actually a good question. Sure, she met a cute redhead this morning, but that's not _meeting_ someone meeting someone, especially considering the odds are good they wouldn't ever meet again. So why did she react like that to the question?

"I'm pretty sure," Lisa replied. "So yeah, we're coming, and no, you don't need to set an extra place."

"Bummer."

"Dana..."

"You know I just want you to be happy."

"I do know that. But I don't have to be dating someone to be happy."

"Okay, but how would you know? It's been six years, Lisa. Sometimes it seems like you died when Matt did. It's time to get out there again, especially if Ben is going away to college next year." Dana sighed.

"That's next year," Lisa snapped. "I know your kids have a ways to go before you need to deal with all this application process insanity, and I really hope that it's not this insane by then. Because seriously? It's insane."

"All right, all right." Dana did not sound like she was actually agreeing to anything.

Lisa shook her head. "You're so not giving up on this, are you?"

"I'm still kinda stuck on that tone," Dana admitted. "What's his name?"

"There's no guy."

"Okay, then what's _her_ name?"

Lisa closed her eyes and bit her lip. Dana knew her too damn well.

"Ugh, fine! Her name's Charlie. She's not from around here, I met her for like two seconds, and okay, she's cute, but seriously, that so does not count!"

"Going back to your old type?"

Lisa could practically hear her sister's eyebrow shoot up towards her hairline.

"Because you so don't need that in your life again. You say you want no strings, but then they move on, and you’re all heartbroken."

"Now, this conversation? We are definitely not having."

"Right. Sorry."

Lisa took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She knew Dana was just protective of her. Knew that she was afraid Lisa would get involved with someone who would treat her like Ben's father had, not that she remembered him. But she kind of wished Dana would pick one thing to worry about: Lisa being alone, or Lisa getting involved with the wrong person.

"You know, you sound like Darth Vader when you do that weird yoga breathing."

Lisa couldn't help but chuckle at that. "Yeah, you've mentioned it once or twice."

 

~*~

A bell tinkled as Charlie walked into the shop. Funny. She hadn't noticed that when Lisa opened the door earlier. She looked up and didn't see an actual bell over the door. So, magic or electronics? She didn't see a lens or a speaker, so she was leaning towards magic.

That was either promising or spooky. Possibly both.

There was a faint scent of sandalwood. Probably fresh-lit incense, more for ambiance than anything. Whoever was working—what had Lisa said her name was? Brigid?—wasn't visible and hadn't come out for the bell, which was odd. Charlie headed over to the bookshelf to see what the offerings were in a shop like this. The good stuff would almost certainly be behind the counter, but sometimes these places left a title or two out to catch people's interest. Made it easier to identify the serious customers if they gravitated towards that stuff.

Sure enough, mixed in with the Silver RavenWolf and Lady Pixie Moondust there was the obligatory Raymond Buckland, but more to the point, a completely nondescript book with not only Hermetic symbols but Phoenecian, too. Not that Charlie could actually read Phonecian, but she'd had to learn a symbol or two here and there. They were used surprisingly often in warding spells, which, depending on what (if anything) she learned here, actually might come in handy. She picked the book up and started thumbing through it.

The shopkeeper was at her side in seconds.

"Sorry, I was just dealing with some cat issues."

"Cat issues?" Charlie raised an eyebrow.

"Laptops are warm, which kitties love,” the shopkeeper explained. “My cat is a long-hair that sheds like a dandelion, which laptops do not love."

Charlie shuddered at the thought of a fan clogged with cat fur. "Yeah, not a great combo."

"So, did you find what you're looking for?"

"Actually, what I'm looking for is a reading," Charlie said. "I didn't see any listed, but I was hoping..."

"Depends what kind of reading."

"I'm not entirely sure what kind of reading to call it. I'm... reasonably sure someone cast some pretty heavy mojo on me, but I don't know who and I don't know why."

"What makes you think someone cast a spell on you?" the shopkeeper asked. "Streak of bad luck? Nightmares?"

"Either time travel or something even more extreme, because I woke up in Michigan this morning and it wasn't 2015 anymore, Toto." Moment of truth. Would this chick think Charlie was crazy? Would she have been just waiting for her to walk in because she was somehow in on this? Or would she potentially be helpful?

"That... would actually be easier to detect than bad luck or nightmares." The shopkeeper looked at her shrewdly. "Would this be an 'in the line of duty' kind of thing?"

Score. Yup, this chick was clearly in the know. Not that that guaranteed she'd be safe. She could always turn out to be Rowena 2.0.

"Yeah. Hadn't thought of it those exact terms, but yeah, it would," Charlie replied.

"I'm Brigid, by the way," the shopkeeper said, extending a hand.

"Charlie."

"Come on out back, and I'll see what I can see."

Charlie wasn't crazy about going into the back of the shop. But then, what had she expected? People didn't just do readings in the middle of a store when anyone could wander in. So, she followed Brigid through the predictable beaded curtain and into the dimly-lit room that held two very uncomfortable-looking folding chairs and a card table covered with a starry tablecloth. On the table was a deck of cards. Charlie was relieved when Brigid took the chair furthest from the door, leaving Charlie with an unblocked escape route if she needed it.

"So, other than potential time-and-space travel, what is it that makes you think you've been hexed?" Brigid asked.

"Well..." Charlie supposed there was no way around it if she wanted answers. "The last thing I remember before I woke up in Benton Harbor this morning was that I was probably just about to... die. And I'm pretty sure I did, because the friends I called up this morning clearly believed I was dead and not just missing for the last two years."

Brigid's eyes widened slightly. "That would be some pretty serious mojo."

"We'd been dealing with some pretty serious stuff."

"Hunters generally do." Brigid picked up the deck and started shuffling, then passed it to Charlie and motioned for her to do the same. "There is something about your aura, that's for sure. Doesn't feel like afterlife stuff, though. Any chance you ended up in one of the faerie realms?"

Charlie stopped shuffling. "I mean, I had been for about a year. Just got back a few months before all this went down. The key to that door was broken, though."

"There's never just one key," Brigid said.

"True. A tornado will do." Charlie started shuffling again. She couldn't have gone to Oz, right? Did that work for any of the other realms? "But I'm pretty sure there weren't any that day."

"Got a date?"

"May 6, 2015." Kind of hard to forget.

Brigid pulled an oversized smartphone out of her pocket.

"Electronics do okay in here?" Charlie asked. "I thought people generally tried to keep them away from magic."

"Most do." Brigid tapped away. "Technopagans don't."

Now there was a word Charlie hadn't heard in ages. She hadn't realized, actually, that anyone used it in real life, because she was pretty sure the last time she'd heard it had been a _Buffy_ episode. As she shuffled, Charlie realized it was kind of odd she hadn't gone looking for weather disturbances herself. That was kind of basic stuff, especially when you've literally been to Oz.

"So, that was actually a pretty high activity day," Brigid said. She turned her smartphone around. "In one spot, four tornadoes hit at once."

"All in Kansas? No, wait, that looks like some were in Nebraska."

"Yeah. Any chance you ended up traveling the yellow brick road?"

"Pretty sure Dorothy wouldn't have sent me back with a memory wipe," Charlie said before her brain caught up with her. She set down the cards once she caught herself.

"But somebody sent you back through the Lake Michigan Triangle, by the sound of it. Cut the deck," Brigid said. She didn't miss a beat and didn't even raise an eyebrow at Charlie's slip. Maybe she thought Charlie was being a wiseass. Fair enough, because she kind of was, just not about knowing Dorothy. "Maybe whatever the deal is there scrambled your circuits."

"The Lake Michigan Triangle?"

"You landed at the southernmost tip of it, so it sounds like that was the gateway back from wherever you went." Brigid reached over and took the cards back. She began laying them out on the table.

"Maybe. But I don't think my body went with me," Charlie said. "Pretty sure if they hadn't seen a body, my friends' reaction would have been 'where the hell have you been' instead of 'who the hell is this,' y'know?"

She made a mental note to ask anyway. They must have burned her body, right? That thought sent a shudder down her spine. Sure, they should give her a hunter’s funeral. She just shouldn’t have to be thinking about it after the fact.

Brigid hummed in response as she studied the cards before her. "Queen of Cups is obviously you. No shock to see the Tower in your past. Ace of Swords in the present generally means a breakthrough, which coming back from the dead would definitely count as."

"Doesn't exactly say from where, though," Charlie pointed out.

"It wouldn't," Brigid agreed. "But what's interesting is that nowhere in here do I see any cards in any positions that would suggest a human magician was involved."

"Human magician?"

"Witch, wizard, mage, whatever. But you said you've been to at least one of the faerie realms, and that might not show up. The Tarot was pretty much designed by humans for humans."

Charlie nodded slowly. "So, what are the last two cards?"

"You know, I almost didn't even pull them, since you're asking about the past and present rather than the future. Two of Cups generally means the start of a new relationship. Queen of Coins is generally a woman working on firming up her financial or material situation. Could be you, since I'm guessing you didn't exactly come back with your wallet."

"I actually did," Charlie said. She thought about how quickly she’d hacked back in to her old revenue streams. "Plus, I'm pretty resourceful. Don't worry, I can pay you."

"Not what I meant," Brigid said. "Still sounds like she could be you."

"Or she could be the person that other card wants me to hook up with." Charlie shrugged. "Not that I'd mind, in general, but probably not the best time to think about an actual relationship."

Brigid nodded slowly. Score another point for not wigging out over the lesbian thing.

"So, any other ideas on how to figure out who or what brought me... here?" Charlie asked.

"A couple. I don't keep all the ingredients I'd need to do a faerie-realm scrying though. Most are pretty commonplace, but there's one that's expensive and kind of obscure."

"Which is...?"

"African dream root. It's usually used for accessing other people’s dreams, but if you're trying to scry other realms, you really need to anoint the mirror with it to get results that aren't just 'answer uncertain, please try again.'"

"Got it." Charlie nodded. "I'll see what I can do on that front. I may have a potential source."

Of course, said potential source was still probably a good ten hours away. Still, if they had it, it'd be faster than FedEx.

"It'll also work best on the full moon," Brigid added. "Extra juice that way, which you're going to need."

"And the next full moon would be..."

"Next Tuesday," Brigid said.

Charlie sighed. Of course it would.

"If it's any consolation, it doesn't _look_ like anything nasty is hanging around you," Brigid added. "I mean, I know hunters tend to assume it's always something bad, but good things do happen, you know."

"When's the last time someone randomly came back to life and there wasn't something bad going on?" Because seriously, even Dean getting his ass yanked out of Hell was all Apocalypse Now-ish. Bright side, he helped stop it, so maybe she could be that lucky. Preferably without all the drama. And the apocalypse.

"Gotta say, I haven't yet met anyone who randomly came back to life."

"Until today."

"We still don't know this is random." Brigid shrugged. "You've been to a faerie realm. You came back at the tip of the Lake Michigan Triangle. This seriously reeks of faerie. The question is just which one. Or ones. I mean, can you think of any that would have anything bad to gain by bringing you back?"

"Not... really." Sure, Dorothy would do it if she could, but Dorothy was just as human as Charlie. Charlie had made some friends who were native to Oz, and her split self hadn't _completely_ alienated them all. But that was a far cry from anyone being invested enough to bring her back from the dead when she hadn't even died there. How would they even know?

"Maybe it'll come to you."

"What do I owe you?"

Brigid named a sum, and Charlie counted out the bills, most of them still crisp from the ATM.

"I'll be back once I've got the African dream root. Then can you tell me the rest, or is this not a DIY kinda spell?

"Oh, you can definitely do it. In fact, that's preferable." Brigid sighed. "Good luck getting a hold of that, though. Like I said, pricey and obscure."

Charlie nodded absently, her mind already on what she was going to do with herself for the next ten hours. She got up from the table and waited as Brigid put the Tarot cards away and got up as well, then followed her into the store just as a bell rang.

"Seriously, how have you got that set up?"

"I can't go telling you all my tricks, now, can I?" Brigid asked with a wink.

Turned out it was Lisa who had just come in, yoga mat slung over her shoulder again.

"Oh, hi," Lisa said. "How was Gus'?"

"Awesome," Charlie replied with a grin. "Would've been better with company, though."

Lisa looked like she was trying not to blush.

"Just heading up to set up the lunchbreak class," Lisa said. "You could always give that a try."

Charlie seriously considered it for all of a minute. She still felt pretty full from breakfast, which was one count against that plan. Also, for someone who'd been dead for almost two years and had only been back alive for a few hours, she was actually starting to feel pretty tired. All of which added up to the idea of a yoga class being a bad idea.

"My turn for a rain check," she said at last, throwing in a wink for good measure. There was nothing that said she had to hang around here until Tuesday. In fact, that would probably be a bad plan if Rowena or someone/something wanted her for their nefarious scheming.

"Sure thing," Lisa replied with a chuckle. Then she turned and headed up the stairs framed by the wall full of crystals and other shiny things.

When she turned back to Brigid, Charlie found that she was giving her something that wasn't quite a glare but also wasn't quite not a glare. Charlie raised her eyebrows in question.

"Lisa's not in the know," Brigid said. "And she's had a rough time of it."

"Like I said, not a good time to go looking for a relationship." Charlie shrugged. If, on the other hand, they just happened to get to see a lot more of each other before Charlie blew town, that would be fine as far as she was concerned. Also, it would be none of Brigid's business. Lisa seemed like someone who knew her own mind and could make her own decisions. She also seemed interested. Could be fun.

Still, Brigid's words made her realize there had been sadness in Lisa's eyes. Much as Charlie was down for a fun time with a beautiful woman, she didn't want to be part of making her sadder. Maybe Lisa was more of a relationship person than a fun fling person. And wow, she was way over-thinking this. For all Charlie knew, she'd be whisked back to the bunker when the boys got here (and tested her every way possible. She should probably just have everything ready and lined up to go.). So, she was putting this horse so far behind it was playing Mario Kart all by itself.

For now, she just needed somewhere to crash. She’d spotted a place not far from Gus’ Diner, and that would have to do.  
 


	2. Chapter 2

Ben had study hall last period on Wednesdays. The good thing about that was if he did have any homework at that point, he could usually bang it out before he got home. The bad thing was that if he'd already done the rest of his homework during history, which was the only way he didn't end up sleeping through it, then study hall was almost as boring as history.

Almost.

At least they were allowed to have their laptops out, since they needed them for their homework. True, they were supposed to be actually doing homework, but cruising the UMich website was its own kind of homework. He figured he could make a case for it if he got caught. No point adding detention on top of everything else.

Ben supposed that watching current students drive their bikes around a giant black cube wasn't the sort of research his guidance counselor wanted him to do before this weekend.

He scrolled through the school of engineering offerings for the millionth time instead. He supposed it made sense that they didn't let freshmen declare a major, but he wished he could get right to the good stuff. He was in AP calculus, after all, so he'd be a leg up on anyone who had to start from the beginning with that. Sure, there were fun electives he could take, but the mechanical engineering ones all had engineering prerequisites.

His mom wasn't convinced he should tie himself to engineering. At least his guidance counselor agreed it made sense. Sure, if he decided to do something else sophomore year, it'd be easy enough to switch, but the main thing was that he liked working with his hands. He could almost always figure out what made something tick, given enough time, and if it was broken, he might not always be able to fix it, but he could usually figure out why. Mom wasn't against him going into engineering, exactly. She just wanted him to keep his options open. At least, that's what she said. But she'd get this uncomfortable look any time it came up, and he'd learned to change the subject quickly.

He clicked over to the minors listing. Materials science sounded dry as hell, but he was willing to bet it would be a good fit. Then again, the "multidisciplinary design minor" sounded really cool. The goal was seriously to invent something. Sure, it'd probably be pretty basic, but how many people got to invent stuff for school? Not the poor schmucks majoring in crap like history, that was for sure.

The coop program looked interesting too. That would definitely help keep the heat off of Mom. How she'd managed to scrape up as much as she had to get him started was beyond Ben's comprehension. The numbers seriously didn't add up. Sure, if she, like, owned her own yoga studio or something, he could see how she could've come up with a college fund for him. But just teaching freelance like she did? Hell, Ben wasn't sure how they were even living where they were living. Sure, it was a rental, but it was a nice house. He had classmates with two parents, both in corporate drone jobs, who didn't live anywhere that nice. But, they were also probably not going to have to take out massive loans to pay for their schooling, even with a college fund to start from. If he could squeeze out a semester or two of getting paid to earn credits, that would definitely help.

Ben looked around the classroom. Nobody looked that thrilled with what they were doing, but just about everyone else seemed to be doing actual homework (or at least successfully faking it). He glanced up at the cracked clock over the door. Still another half hour to go.

He turned back to his laptop. Was he being selfish with this whole college thing? He could probably get a job that would train him as a mechanic and start helping his mom out now. She'd be pissed, though, and really, he'd rake in a ton more once he had an engineering degree. Then he could pay off the loans and maybe even help his mom buy a house of her own. Or a studio. Hell, the right house could have a studio _in_ it. And he knew she wanted that. Much as she liked teaching at the shop and the hospital, he'd caught her doodling sketches of what she wanted her studio to look like someday. She never talked about it, though, and he wasn't sure why. She wanted him to have dreams, so why shouldn't she?

She'd say it wasn't his job to worry about her, but if not him, then who? Sure, there was Auntie Dana, but she lived in freaking Indiana. His mom had friends, but they didn't really seem close. Not like the friend-circles girls his age had, or even other kids' moms. Weren't women supposed to flock together like that? Not that guys didn't, but there was something different about how girls were with their friends. His mom just seemed so alone, sometimes. Ever since Matt. Ever since the incident. It didn't seem to bother her, but it bothered Ben. It didn't seem fair. She worked so hard to take care of him, so yeah, of course he was going to try and take care of her too. What kind of person would he be if he didn't?

With a sigh, he opened up his English paper and started re-reading it. Maybe he’d find something there he could fix.

~*~

It was almost eight o’clock when they called for her actual address. Charlie felt rested from the nap she’d taken, but butterflies started shooting around her stomach like rockets as she thought about everything she’d found so far while researching the missing people. The brothers were for sure going to think that not only was she not her, but that she was responsible for whatever had happened to those people.

The kicker was, other than timing, she had no way of knowing she wasn’t.

By the time they arrived, it was just after nine. She squared her shoulders and opened the door. It occurred to her briefly that normal people would be a little more wary of opening the door to a couple of armed men. Normal people who’d been killed in a crappy motel room by a one-armed man would probably panic and go out the window. So Charlie thought she could be forgiven a few jitters.

“What’s up, bitches?” she asked, flashing them a quick Vulcan salute as her voice shook a little. They both looked unimpressed and kept their guns trained on her. “No? Okay, then. Got a silver flask full of salted holy water?”

“Like I’d waste a…” Dean started.

Sam took one hand off his gun, reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a flask and tossed it to her.

Dean, predictably, scowled at him.

“What?” Sam asked. “We don’t all have to be Bad Santa, Dean.”

It would be hilarious if they weren’t both still pointing their guns at her. She gulped the salty water and screwed up her face at the taste. That never got any better.

“Ugh,” she said. “Okay, and the borax?”

They both just looked at her. 

“C’mon guys. First test you ever made me do.”

“Haven’t seen a leviathan in almost that long,” Dean said. His gun lowered by an inch.

“Unless you count Purgatory,” she pointed out. “Guess there wasn’t any borax there though.”

“And Charlie would know that how?” Dean demanded.

“Um, Dean… you told her yourself,” Sam pointed out.

“You… told her,” Dean sputtered.

Charlie huffed and grabbed the bottle of borax she’d picked up at the store earlier. She poured it over her hand and shook off the soapy solution before handing it over to them. Dean took a sniff, followed by Sam.

“It’s really me, Dean,” she said. “I swear by my pretty floral bonnet.”

“Charlie?” Dean asked, lowering his gun to his side.

Sam followed suit and went a step further, jamming the gun into the back of his waistband.

Charlie took a step back and waved them in. “C’mon, before somebody sees you and calls the cops. Kinda looks like you’re breaking in, you know.”

Dean shook his head and put his gun away, then swept her into a bear hug. Charlie felt tears trickle onto her scalp, and that almost broke her too. She really wasn’t up for an angst-fest, though.

“Uh, oxygen… becoming an issue,” she said.

Dean let go of her like he’d been burned and took a step back.

Sam took his place, though, actually picking her up off the ground. He spun her around, and Charlie couldn’t help laughing. Once he set her down, though, it was clear he was just as bad as Dean, scrubbing away at his eyes and trying to make it look like he was just messing with his hair.

“How?” Dean asked finally.

“Dude, why do you think I called?” she retorted. “I mean, I would anyway, but I was kind of thinking one of you did something…”

“Incredibly stupid?” Dean asked. “Yeah, sounds like us.”

“Wait a sec.” Charlie realized she still didn’t know one very important thing. Dean seemed like his old self, and Sam had said the Mark was gone, but that was no guarantee he really was okay. “Are you…?”

It took a second for him to respond, but then Dean rolled up his sleeve and showed her the Mark was gone.

“It worked,” she breathed. Hearing it was one thing. Seeing it as another. It was worth it then. Would’ve totally sucked to get killed for nothing, even if she was back.

“Came with a hell of a price,” Dean said. 

And there it was. Whatever had made Sam sound off about this earlier, it was that price.

Then he frowned and added, “That all kind of worked out, though. Eventually.”

“Dean,” Sam said, “you don’t think Amara…”

“Dude, I have no idea,” Dean replied. “I mean, why now? She and Chuck took off.”

“Chuck’s back?” Charlie asked. She thought they’d said he’d died before Kevin became a prophet. “And, wait, who’s Amara?”

“Guess we need to catch you up,” Sam said.

So they did. Oh, boy, did they.

~*~

"Wow." Charlie figured she'd said that plenty in the last hour, but really, what else was there to say? "Just... wow."

"Yeah," Dean said.

"So, how many people died?" she asked.

"Less than if I'd gone full darkside," Dean said with a wince. "On the plus side, the Louisiana Stynes aren't going to be a problem anymore."

"And for all their bragging, we haven't heard or seen a peep from the other branches," Sam added.

"The _Book_ 's shielded, though, right?" Charlie asked. "Because if they can track it... what?"

Neither of them said anything, but they both looked like they wanted to crawl under the scratched-up little table.

"You do still have the book," she said. Because that wasn't a question. That was an absolute necessity.

"Rowena... may have managed to get away with the Book," Sam said. "And the Codex. And your key."

"Holy fuck," Charlie said. Yeah, that was way beyond frak. She winced as she thought of the damage Rowena could do with all of that at her fingertips.

"It's not all bad," Dean said. "She did help us put Lucifer back in the Cage."

"Lucifer got out of the Cage? Seriously, I was only gone for two years, guys!" Charlie looked back and forth between them.

"That one's on me," Sam said.

Of course. Self-sacrificing asshole probably made some crap deal.

"And Cas," Dean said. "And Rowena. But mostly Cas, actually."

"To be fair, it was Lucifer who locked Amara away in the first place," Sam said.

"Wait, this was to do with the Darkness?" Charlie asked. "How the hell do you leave a little detail like that out?"

"With much practice," Dean replied.

"Dudes! Lie to civilians all you want, but I need the truth out of you!"

"I know," Sam said. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Dean said. "Me, too."

"Besides," Sam said, "we were focusing on the part where Mom's back."

"And working with the British Men of Letters douchebags," Dean added. "Meanwhile, Cas is trying to help us find Lucifer's kid before it gets born and can destroy the world. Again. Fun times."

"I need a drink," Charlie said. She took the flask Dean handed her and took a healthy swig of the... was that maple-flavored whiskey? Huh. She handed it back with a muttered "thanks."

"The point," Sam said, "is that you're not the first person to randomly get brought back to life this year."

"So, what, you think Amara noticed things aren't going so well with Mom and figured she'd give it another try?" Dean asked. "Cause I'm pretty sure she and Chuck went to a galaxy far, far away for their little family meeting."

"Just considering all the options," Sam said.

"So, the psychic I saw earlier..."

"You went to a psychic?" Dean asked sharply.

"Yeah, Dean," she replied, scowling at him. "When I was suddenly alive and didn't know how or why, I went to a psychic for answers. Why? What did _you_ do?"

"And that ended so well," Dean muttered.

"I wasn't going to encourage her to look an angel in the eye in their true form," Charlie said drily. "Wait... you don't think Cas...?"

Sam shook his head. "Wings still aren't working, and he's definitely _persona non grata_ in heaven, anyway."

"About that," Charlie said, "not entirely sure that's where I went this time."

"What?" Dean demanded.

"Chill, Dean," she said. "I didn't say I went to hell, either. I don't remember going anywhere."

That settled Dean down and put a curious look on Sam’s face.

"What do you remember?" Sam asked.

"I remember that d-bag breaking into my motel room," she said. "I remember sending you guys the key to the Codex. And then I remember waking up this morning in Benton Harbor."

"Benton Harbor?" Sam asked. "Really?"

"Why?" Dean asked. "What's so special about Benton Harbor?"

"It's one of the three points of the Lake Michigan Triangle," Charlie said. "Yeah, I know, Sam. That psychic, Brigid, told me about it. Not as famous as the Bermuda version, but it's actually a pretty active whatever-it-is. She thinks I ended up in one of the faerie realms and came back through there."

"Oz?" Sam asked.

"Maybe?" she replied. "But I don't know why I wouldn't remember it."

"Sounds like you don't remember dying, either," Dean said. "Maybe Dorothy got one of the good witches to wipe that and they took a little more than they were supposed to?"

"That's as good a theory as any," Charlie said with a shrug. "Anyway, Brigid's idea is for me to try scrying for what brought me back. Just, to be able to see across realms takes an ingredient her shop doesn't carry."

"Of course it does," Dean said. "What is it? The liver of some extinct lizard?"

"Ew!" Charlie shuddered. "No! In fact, I'm kind of hoping you might have it."

"What is it?" Sam asked.

"African dream root," she said. "Not how it's usually used, I know. But apparently if you mix it in with some other stuff and use it to anoint a scrying mirror, it can let you see across different dimensions."

"Huh," Sam said. "I mean, it kind of makes sense, in a weird way. Wouldn't you need something from the specific realm you're trying to see into, though?"

"Yeah," Charlie said. "According to Brigid, my aura's full of faerie energy. It should attune me directly to whatever realm, Oz or otherwise. And, since it's through a blacked-out mirror, my eyes should be good and safe. I think."

"That's great," Dean said.

"But...?" Charlie asked.

"We used up the last of what we had rescuing you from that djinn," Sam said. "Those djinn."

"Oh." Charlie sighed. "I guess that would've been too easy. You think maybe there might be some in the bunker? That place seems to have everything."

"Maybe," Sam said, "though it'd probably be too old to use."

"Your buddy Mick came through for Claire," Dean said. "You think maybe he could get us a line on some?"

Charlie made a mental note to ask who Claire was and what she had to do with the British Men of Letters. 

Sam pulled out his phone and looked down at it. "Probably. He's going to want to know what it's for, though, and I'm not sure how well he'll take the truth."

"Oh, so now you don't trust these guys either?" Dean asked.

"Can we not do this right now?" Sam asked. "Yes, I'll ask him. I just need to figure out a story he'll buy without too many questions and without putting Charlie in danger."

"Yeah, I'm good with not being kidnapped and tortured by the creepy British lady," Charlie said. "And, I mean, we've got a few days till the full moon, so, we've got a little time."

"Not a lot, though," Dean said. "We can try Garth, too. He still tries to keep an eye on the network. He might know another source."

"You guys are awesome," Charlie said. "And I know this stuff is expensive. Whatever it costs, you know I'm good for it."

"Charlie, you just got back from who-knows-where after two years of being dead," Dean said. "Don't worry about it."

"Cut the crap, Winchester," she snapped. "You think a little thing like being dead for a couple of years is gonna hold me back for long? Please." 

"We did bring the Gremlin, by the way" Sam said. He pulled the keys out of his pocket and handed them to her. "The registration's probably no good, but..."

She fixed him with a look. As if she'd deal with the DMV on a regular basis when perfectly good code could do the job for her. He looked surprised at first, then properly chastened. "Do not doubt your queen, minions."

"Yes, your majesty," Dean said with a lopsided grin. 

"I mean, it would've been a problem if anyone had gone and had me declared dead. Well, any of me," she added. "Thanks for not doing that! And for bringing my car."

"We did give you a hunter's funeral, though," Sam said. 

There was that shudder again.

"I figured," she said. "Apparently that wasn't a problem for whoever... or whatever... brought me back. 'Cause everything's exactly as it was."

"Even the Leia tattoo?" Dean asked. Asshole.

"Unfortunately," Charlie replied. Yeah, she’d checked. “Nothing new, either. Oh! I booked you the room next door." Charlie turned and pulled the key card out of the desk drawer and handed it to him.

"You're the best, Charlie," Dean said. He pulled her into another slightly less bone-crushing hug and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"I know," she said.

"I'll grab our bags," Sam said. He waved the key card in salute with one hand as he caught the Impala keys with the other, then let himself out.

"Charlie..." Dean said.

"Dean, don't," she said. 

"You don't even know what I was going to say!"

"Um, something about how sorry you are for getting me killed, everything's your fault, that kind of thing?"

Dean let out a huff. "You know me too well."

"I'm a big girl, Dean," she said. "All growed up even before I met you two. I make my own decisions. You don't get to own the consequences. Steal whatever else you want, but you don't get to have that."

His shoulders slumped. "Is that really what I'm doing?"

"Kinda," she said. "I mean, I get it. You've spent literally your entire life being responsible for everyone else, starting with Sam. Which was so not fair, by the way. But the point is, you're all grown up too. You need to let that shit go."

"I don't know how." He shook his head. 

"I learned," she pointed out. "You can too."

"I'm an old dog, Charlie," he said. "Not so good with the new tricks."

"Bullshit," she retorted.

"Excuse me?"

"You need to learn some Latin, or Sumerian, or Enochian for a spell, you frakkin' learn it," she said. "Every new big bad that comes along, you adapt. Don't try saying you can't learn, because you do just fine. Except when you don't want to."

"That's... I'm not sure if that's supposed to be flattering or harsh." He sat down hard in the wobbly chair by the window, and for a second Charlie thought it was going to crumble under him. It held, though.

"Both," she said, moving to sit on the slightly safer bed. She scooted back and crossed her legs, leaning her elbows on her splayed knees. "You do realize we'll still love you if you're not always taking responsibility for us, right?"

"We?"

"Me. Sam. Cas."

That got something halfway between a laugh and a scoff.

"What?"

"Just... something I said back when I had just got turned back from a demon." Dean shook his head. "And that kinda proves exactly what you just said."

"I have no idea what you just said," Charlie replied, "but if it means you're getting it, then good."

"Yeah, maybe." Dean pushed himself up out of the chair again. It creaked alarmingly but still held. "I'm gonna go help Sam. You had dinner?"

"Hours ago. But I'm always up for a snack." Charlie grinned. "Coming back from the dead takes a lot of energy, apparently."

"Don't I know it."

Charlie shook her head and watched him leave. Once the door had closed behind him, she let herself flop backwards onto the bed, unfolding her legs as she did. She hadn't been kidding. She was actually pretty hungry again already. Not for brains, though, which was a plus.

~*~

Dean had to admit, the place Charlie had brought them to was pretty good. The bacon cheeseburger might not be the best he'd ever had, but they half-drowned it in fried onions, so he was happy. Sammy had even managed to get some kind of rotisserie chicken thing that looked pretty good. Charlie was sticking with onion rings, which she claimed was self-defense.

There were a lot of windows, but that was par for the course with this kind of diner. Dean wasn't sure why that bothered him so much. He always noticed, obviously. But tonight, he felt on edge. It was probably just the case. He'd feel a lot better once they knew what they were dealing with.

"So, get this," Sam said, "there've been four disappearances in town over the last couple of weeks."

"That higher than usual?" Dean asked.

"The newspaper clearly thinks so," Sam said.

"When was the last one?" Charlie asked, her tone suggesting she had some idea what the answer would be.

"Just because it was last night doesn't mean it's connected," Dean said.

"Doesn't mean it's not, either," she retorted.

"Can't argue that," Sam said. "But it didn't _all_ happen last night, so there's every chance it's a separate phenomenon. Besides, this isn't where you... woke up."

"True," Charlie said. "So, anything along Route 94?"

"Way ahead of you," Sam said. "Aaaand, no. Also, nothing in or around Benton Harbor out of the ordinary, disappearances or otherwise."

Dean shook his head. "When is it ever two things?"

"Why would it start here weeks before Charlie got here?" Sam countered. "And how would it know this was where she'd go?"

"Good question." Dean turned to Charlie. "What made you head here?"

"I'd heard about the store here from some Moondoor peeps," Charlie said with a shrug. "Wiccan types, said it wasn't just your typical New Agey place. So I gave it a shot."

"And?"

"It's marked for hunters to recognize," she said. "No guarantee that means it's safe, but Brigid seems legit. I can't independently verify her read on my aura, obviously, but everything about the anointing blend checks out."

"Even the special ingredient?" Dean asked. 

"Even that," Charlie agreed. 

"You think Cas...?" Sam started.

"We can't pull him off the Antichrist," Dean said. "I mean, if some psychic could get that much, I think he'd be able to get an even clearer 'read on your aura,' but as much as I want answers—and believe me, I do—the Antichrist still takes priority for his Spidey senses."

"Fair point," Charlie said. Then she asked, "You don't think that...?"

"Nothing's impossible," Sam said, "but I'm having a hard time imagining what motive either the kid or its dad would have."

"Get the two of you distracted?" she asked. "Cause if so, it kinda worked."

"She's got a point," Dean said. How had he not thought of that? "Shit, I hope not. But if either of them is around here, Cas shouldn't be far. He hasn't been catching up, but he always seems to be only a couple of steps behind."

That probably shouldn't be as reassuring as it was. Oh well. Dean would take what he could get.

~*~

Sunrise yoga wasn't exactly Charlie's usual jam, but she was up at the crack of dawn and, well, it helped that the teacher was hot. First-time drop-ins were only ten bucks, according to the website.

Not that she had checked that out before heading to Wally World yesterday afternoon to beef up her extremely limited wardrobe and therefore added a pair of hot pink yoga pants and a cute t-shirt of a raccoon holding a PS3 controller. At all.

Sam was just getting back from a jog when she stepped out of her room.

"You're up early," he said. 

"Couldn't sleep," she replied. "That shop has a yoga class first thing. Figured I'd check that out, since there's nothing new to work with so far."

Sam raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, and I met the teacher yesterday, and she's cute, all right?"

Sam grinned. "Go get her, then."

Charlie grinned back and proceeded to jump into her car ( _her_ car, which felt so much more right than that random Ford she’d rented) and drive to the shop.

A couple of people were already there. Of course, it was still ten of seven, so apparently Lisa hadn't arrived yet to open up.

"Hey," said one of them, "weren't you here yesterday?"

"Yeah. I got here kinda late, so I hung around to talk to the teacher," she said. "Lisa, right?"

The other woman nodded.

"I'm Charlie, by the way."

"I'm Maisy," the other woman said. Then she pointed to the other women. "And this is Cheryl, Beth, and Kelly."

They all exchanged a round of greetings.

"I don't think I've seen you around town before," said the blonde who was apparently Kelly. 

"I'm not from around here," Charlie admitted. "Just passing through. Figured I might as well get some exercise in even while I'm away from home, though, right?"

"Cool," said Beth. "What kind of yoga do you usually do?"

Charlie was saved from having to fake an answer when Lisa pulled up, greeted them all, and opened the shop door so that they could go inside.

Once she'd made her way upstairs, Charlie quickly spotted the shelving that held the mats. She actually had taken a class or two before, so she knew that much. She pulled out a mat and claimed a section of floor. Not quite at the very front of the room, but definitely not hugging the back wall either. This did get her a look or two from the others.

"Did I steal someone's space?" she asked.

"Janice," Kelly said. "She's never late, though. Must not be coming today for some reason."

That made Charlie's ears prick, but she ordered them to stand down. People had crap come up all the time without being kidnapped or eaten by monsters. The fact that this Janice person was predictable enough for it to be weird that she wasn't here was noteworthy, but only if it turned out she was actually full-on missing. So, while it was apparently weird that she was in this person's spot, it still had a good line of sight to the teacher's mat, which she totally only cared about so she could follow the poses properly. Mostly.

Charlie thought she did pretty well throughout most of the class. She was surprised by the instruction to come up with an intention for the class and the day, but Lisa was a good teacher and spelled it out for the drop-in newbie. Positive words only, present tense. Easy enough.

_I am supposed to be here._

It came to mind quickly enough. She didn't think it was quite what Lisa had in mind, but nobody was asked to say what theirs was, so Charlie decided not to worry about it. Instead, she focused on following the instructions for the poses while not falling on her ass or doing anything else embarrassing. LARPing had actually taught her a lot about balance and movement, so she didn't feel as awkward as she had the last time she'd taken a class.

She did, however, have trouble when they got to the triangle pose. It looked easy enough. Lisa made it sound easy enough. But Charlie couldn't quite keep herself aligned like she was "sandwiched between two panes of glass." The bonus to that, though, was having Lisa come over to re-align her.

"Is it all right if I touch you?" Lisa asked.

"Totally," Charlie replied. Too bad she was in no position to make that sound like anything other than "desperate student."

Lisa put one hand between Charlie's shoulder blades and one on her shoulder, using just a bit of pressure to guide her into the position she was supposed to be in. Then, holy mother of Frodo, she did the same thing again but placing one hand in the small of Charlie's back and one on her hip. If she were a serious yoga student, Charlie was pretty sure she'd have been able to feel everything set into place once she was aligned properly. Instead, all she could feel was the gentle but firm touch of Lisa's hands.

"There," Lisa said. "Now try to keep that alignment for another breath or two, and then we'll do the other side."

Charlie was almost certain she was going to have just as much trouble doing this pose correctly in the opposite direction. She was also pretty sure she was going to die (again) by the end of this class if Lisa kept touching her when she screwed up. This, however, would be a much better way to go.

At the end of the class, Lisa gently coaxed them back from their "corpse" pose (how appropriate). Charlie folded her legs into the closest approximation of lotus position she could manage without spraining something and, when the prompt came, mentally repeated her intention.

_I am supposed to be here._

It actually felt a little truer than it had when she first came up with it. Maybe there was something to this stuff. Hey, considering all the crap she'd seen in the last couple of years, it actually shouldn't take much convincing that an ancient form of moving meditation could, you know, do stuff.

She rolled up her mat and put it away before approaching Lisa to pay for the class.

"Oh, thanks," Lisa said. "The jar's actually over there on the windowsill."

Sure enough, there was a cute little ceramic jar that looked like a beehive, complete with little bees flying around it. The top came off easily enough, and Charlie curled up her ten-dollar bill and placed it inside with the handful of checks and other bills. It seemed like a great recipe for getting ripped off, but then again, anyone who broke in to rob the place would go for the register and maybe the jewelry case, not come up here and peek in a cute beehive. So really, it was kind of brilliant.

"I'd better remind Brigid to deposit all that," Lisa said from over Charlie's shoulder as Charlie closed the jar back up. "Beginning of the month, you know?"

"Are you the boss, then?" Charlie asked, turning to face her.

Lisa laughed and took a couple of steps back to where she had been packing away her gear. "No. Just a helpful employee who gets paid on commission."

Charlie laughed too. "Yeah, then that would be kind of important."

Once Lisa had put everything back into her bag, Charlie continued, "So, running off to more important errands? Or did you want to cash in that rain check?"

Lisa looked startled.

"Hey, I said the offer was open if I was still here. And I am. Plus, you were totally right. Gus' is awesome."

Lisa chewed on her lip for a second, then said, "What the heck. Sure. I have another class at the hospital at ten, but that leaves time for a light breakfast."

"Or maybe not so light and leave out the downward dog?" Charlie suggested.

"I don't actually do that one in the prenatal class," Lisa said with another little laugh. "Kinda the same reason I wouldn't do it on a full stomach."

"That... makes a lot of sense," Charlie agreed. She'd never really given much thought to that sort of thing. "Need a hand with your bag?"

"Nah, I'm used to it," Lisa replied as she hoisted the bag with her mat, clock, singing bowl, and whatever the frak else onto her shoulder. She waved Charlie through the door, then pulled it shut behind them and checked that it had locked.

Charlie continued down the stairs into the store. It felt weird, almost like breaking and entering, to be walking through a store lit only with the sunlight coming through the windows. It was kind of a relief to get outside, actually.

"Where's your car?" Lisa asked after locking up the main entrance to the shop.

"Oh," Charlie stammered, "um, yeah. That was a rental while my car was getting fixed. Which it is now. Fixed."

"Oh." Lisa looked disappointed. "I guess that means you'll be heading out after breakfast?"

And this was the problem with lies. They led to more lies. Which was fine for role-playing, because everybody was in on creating the story. Charlie decided to make her life easier by sticking with as much truth as she could.

"Actually, I'm not sure," she said. "I mean, that's not the main reason I'm in town. Might end up here for a couple of days, might get called away. Hard to tell."

There. That was true enough and vague enough, right?

"Mysterious," Lisa said with a smirk as she tossed her bag into the back seat of her Honda. "You're going to have to tell me what really did bring you to town over breakfast."

"You got it," Charlie replied with what she hoped was a sincere smile. Because, frak, she was going to have to come up with something now. 

Also, what if the guys were at the diner for breakfast too? Would that be a good thing or a bad thing? She wasn't sure yet what team Lisa played for, and competing with two gorgeous guys (hey, she was a lesbian, not blind) was not what she really wanted to be doing this morning. On the other hand, they could be a useful distraction. Plus, they were much better at the real-life role-playing than Charlie was.

Just as she pulled into the lot at Gus', her phone pinged with a message from Dean.

[Got a line on the Antichrist. Hitting the road for Idaho. BMoL dude going to be there, said he'd bring some ADR. Sammy came up with a story for him.]

_Way to go, Dean. Spell out the potentially apocalypse-inducing part of the message but abbreviate the innocuous crap._

Well, the secret society of stuffy Brits might take exception to being called innocuous, she supposed. Did they have a Ministry of Magic? Were they the Ministry of Magic? Did they have Aurors and Obliviators? Most importantly, did they have a Hogwarts? She'd have to ask when they got back.

[Okay. See you when you get back. Will work the case here in the meantime.]

The reply came back almost instantly.

[Be careful.]

It was hard to know how to answer that, considering on the last "case," she'd literally gotten killed. She settled for sending a thumbs-up emoji as she got out of the car and headed over to walk Lisa inside.

~*~

Lisa wasn't entirely sure what had possessed her to accept Charlie's breakfast invitation. No, that was a lie. She totally knew. Charlie was cute and funny and not going to be in town very long. So, if Lisa was going to take her sister's concerns to heart, not that she ever did, and "get back out there," this was the way to do it. Possible fun, no possible strings. Perfect.

She was kind of impressed by the breakfast Charlie not only ordered but clearly planned to put away. Bacon and eggs, sure, if you were going to have breakfast at a diner (and didn't have to teach another yoga class in a couple of hours), that was the way to go. But the home fries and side of pancakes, well, there was a reason that was called the "hearty breakfast," and it wasn't because it was recommended by the American Heart Association.

Lisa supposed she was being kind of stereotypical, herself, ordering the fruit and yogurt bowl and washing it down with tea. But, again, yoga class at ten. She couldn't actually be more nauseous than the first-trimester students. It wouldn't look professional. 

"So," Lisa said, once they'd placed their orders. "What does bring you to town?"

"Research," Charlie replied quickly. "I'm, uh, scouting small towns for a gaming company. They want new inspo for their graphics teams."

"I didn't realize they did that," Lisa said. "I guess if I'd thought about it at all, I'd have figured they just made up whatever they needed."

"Oh, they do," Charlie said. "But everything needs to be based on something, you know. So, when the output starts getting stale, you've got to add some new input."

"You must do a lot of traveling, then." Lisa took a sip of her tea. 

"You have no idea." Charlie added a scary amount of sugar to her coffee. She also muttered something that sounded like, " _I_ have no idea."

"What?"

"Nothing." Charlie smiled brightly.

Lisa supposed it wasn't her business, and really, the sense of mystery kind of added to her charm. The short red curls bouncing around her face were such a perfect match for her personality. Those grass-green eyes seemed to take in everything around her. And that scar at the base of her neck that snaked below the collar of her shirt, presumably towards her shoulder ... It was way too jagged to be anything surgical. It was faded enough not to be new but not faded enough to be really old, either. There was a story there, but that was definitely too personal to ask.

_A couple of scars, no forwarding address, I was there._

The thought had the feeling of a memory, though Lisa couldn't remember ever having actually said such a thing. But Dana hadn't been wrong: Charlie did fit her old type. Granted, it had been years since Lisa had dated, well, anyone, and definitely anyone who fit that description. It had been even longer since she'd dated a woman. But this wasn't dating. At most it was a fling. Maybe Charlie would stay in town through the weekend, and with Ben away in Ann Arbor ... Maybe it was time Lisa got back into the dating scene. And maybe this was the perfect way to do that. No strings, no expectations. In a word: safe.

"So, you teach yoga at the shop and at the hospital," Charlie said. "I may be doing the long drives, but that's a lot of shuffling around during your workday."

"It is," Lisa agreed. "It’d be nice to have my own studio, but I kind of like the different locations. I'm not stuck indoors somewhere, you know? Sure, sometimes the weather's crappy, but I get to get outside and have a change of scenery."

"Do you ever get to travel?" Charlie squirted what had to be a pint of syrup all over her pancakes before taking a bite.

"I go see my sister in Indiana a few times a year," Lisa replied. "Ben and I are going there in a couple of weeks for Easter, actually."

"Ben?" Charlie asked, her expression suddenly wary.

"My son," Lisa explained. She wasn't sure how much more to say. If that was some kind of a problem, then even a fling wasn't going to work out.

"Oh, cool." Charlie actually looked relieved. That was… promising. "How old?"

"Seventeen," Lisa replied. She decided to get daring. "He's actually going away to check out the University of Michigan up in Ann Arbor this weekend. I can't believe that's coming up so fast."

"Wow. You know, I was going to say you don't look old enough to have a seventeen-year-old, but then I did the math and realized that _I'm_ technically old enough to have a seventeen-year-old, and we're probably close to the same age, so... I'm shutting up now."

Lisa laughed. "Do you have any kids?"

"Me? No." Charlie shrugged. "I mean, not that I've never thought about it, but I'm not sure I'm really mom material, you know?"

"You'd be surprised," Lisa said. "I never thought I was either. Then Ben came along and all of a sudden I was."

"I can see that. Just, it would kind of take a bit more planning for me. Kinda hard to get pregnant not-on-purpose when you only date girls."

Bingo. Lisa had been kind of sure Charlie was interested, but she was rusty and knew it. Still, apparently her instincts were still pretty good. Meanwhile, Charlie was clearly waiting for a reaction.

"Yeah," Lisa agreed with a chuckle. "That does kind of rule out the surprise factor."

That may not have been the best response, considering Charlie still looked a bit guarded. What else could she say short of, "No, seriously, I have the house to myself this weekend, and if you're sticking around, how about we head there Friday night and don't leave till Monday morning"?

"I suppose if I'd stuck to girls, I wouldn't have been surprised either," she continued instead. "But then, that just wasn't me. I liked who I liked, and that was it. And I definitely wouldn't have wanted to miss out on having Ben. I know I'm biased, but he's just a great kid."

"I'm sure he is." Ah, there was that flirtatious little smirk again. "So, like I said before, I can't say for sure how long I'm in town. But there's every chance it'll be at least through Tuesday, unless something comes up to call me away."

"Do you get many last-minute itinerary changes in your line of work?" It didn't seem like there could really be a "go check out this particular location" emergencies.

"You'd be surprised," Charlie said. "I mean, I'm in research mode right now, but I do programming too. Though I can generally do that almost anywhere."

"Huh." That... actually didn't answer anything, but Lisa supposed there was only so nosy she needed to be. "So, for the research part, you just go around taking photos, or how does that work?"

"Yes, exactly," Charlie replied. "So, I may be poking around taking photos here and there."

"Anything in particular you're looking for?"

"It's kind of a know-it-when-you-see-it kinda thing."

"Huh." Lisa drained the last of her tea. "Well, if you're still here tomorrow, and you're maxed out on diner food, you're welcome to come over for dinner."

Charlie's eyes widened. "Sure, that'd be great."

They exchanged numbers, and that's when Lisa noticed the time. It didn't seem possible, but she was actually going to have to hustle to get to the hospital on time.

"Gotta run," she said. "See you tomorrow night?"

"I'll text you in the afternoon to confirm."

"Sounds like a plan." Lisa grinned and reached for her wallet.

"What are you doing?" Charlie asked. "I invited you, so this is on me. Especially if you're feeding me tomorrow."

"I guess that's fair." Lisa had forgotten how much she liked this part of dating girls. Well, women, now. There weren't the same kind of assumptions about whose job it was to do what. She slipped her wallet back into her bag and hoisted it up onto her shoulder. "See you tomorrow, then."

"I wouldn't miss it." Lisa wasn't entirely sure, but she thought there'd been a hint of a wink there. Oh yes, this was going to be a great weekend.


	3. Chapter 3

Charlie went back to her motel room and glared at what she'd picked up at the second-hand store to pass for a fed suit. It really wasn't going to cut it for that, though, and besides, she'd already given Lisa a different story. If her job was to be taking photos for someone else to turn into game graphics (Was that actually a job? It totally needed to be a job.) then she should be able to get away with random t-shirts and jeans, really. 

So, she hung the "suit" back up and slipped on the new jeans she'd picked up with a starburst-design t-shirt. It was still not all that warm, so she debated throwing on a sweatshirt, too. She'd wished she had one once or twice today already, though it should be getting warmer as it got closer to noon. After waffling for a bit, she opted to just keep the sweatshirt in the car in case she could get by with just her jacket.

The next question was where to start. She supposed that poking around the neighborhoods where the vics lived and where they'd gone missing from was as good a starting point as any. So, she dug up a few addresses, popped them into her GPS app, and hit the road.

There didn't seem to be anything special about the home or neighborhood of victim number one. Basic little ranch houses. Nothing weird or out of place. Charlie took a bunch of pictures anyway, for her cover. Besides, maybe something would show up later.

The same was true for victim number two and victim number three. It wasn't until she reached victim four's neighborhood, though, that she caught a break. At first, she couldn't put her finger on it, but she knew something was odd. Could've been the barn at the end of the cul-de-sac, but being old and creepy might have been the extent of its charms. No, it was more like there was something missing than something unexpectedly there. Maybe it was just exhaustion talking, but Charlie didn't think so. There was very definitely something off here, and if she had to take pictures of every square inch to figure out what it was, then that was what she would do.

What was frustrating (well, one of the things that was frustrating) was that she wasn't running into too many (any) family members of the victims. They were the folks most likely to either know something or turn out to be a red herring after. She guessed everyone was at work. (Pfft! Work!) Not even any preschoolers playing outside in the yards. Sure, it was still a bit cool, but it was totally warm enough to go a few rounds with swings and slides. And the swings and slides were there, at nearly every house. Most of the kids were probably in school or daycare, but look at this place. Somebody had to have a stay-at-home family, right?

That had been true at the other vics' homes, the lack of any real sign of life, but she hadn't put it together before because apparently her bar for getting creeped out was a bit too high. She wasn't sure what it meant, but she was increasingly certain that it meant something. It wasn't the kids who were going missing, but ... was it just people who had kids? People who work with kids? What would even do that, and what were the odds they were still alive? Charlie thought she had a pretty good handle on the _Monstrous Book of Monsters_ , but she'd never seen nor heard of something quite like this.

Normally, this would be where she'd drop a dime to Dean and Sam, asking them to check the bunker's library. (Okay, that would totally be Sam.) Instead, it looked like she was going to have to do the legwork herself. A quick search told her that Western Michigan University was probably the best library near here for the job, so she jammed her phone back in her pocket and headed there.

Six hours later, Charlie wanted to rip her hair out. She supposed not every Religious Studies program got deep into monster mythology, but they always seemed to when the boys needed them. Why did this place not have a Classics department? Not that she thought this was going to be some Greco-Roman beastie, but those departments always seemed to work out well for the guys.

"You look really frustrated."

She spun around and came face-to-face with a blond guy, not much taller than her. She could totally take him if she had to. How had she let this guy get the drop on her, though?

"Whoa, whoa! Just trying to help." He held up his hands.

"Sorry, just a bit jumpy." Being recently dead would do that. 

"So, what's got you poking around the stacks looking like they've personally offended you?"

She sighed. "Trying to find anything on mythological creatures. Especially any local lore."

"That's pretty specialized." He looked at her oddly.

"It's ... kind of an independent study project," she said.

"Interesting. Especially since, if anyone here were doing a project like that, they'd probably be doing it with me."

Oh, crap.

"Um, who are you?" she asked.

"Professor Cleveland Morris. Full time chair of the Spirituality, Culture, and Health program and part-time mythological creature enthusiast. So, do you want to try that again?"

"Well, I don't exactly go here," she said. "But it still is basically an independent study project."

"I see. So ... writer of some kind, I'm guessing?"

_Sure, let's go with that._

"Is it that obvious?"

"Only from the sheer fury at the books for letting you down." Prof. Morris shook his head. "So, what are you looking for, specifically?"

"I wish I knew for sure," she replied. "Possibly something that goes after people who have or work with kids?"

"I definitely don't know of anything fitting that description," he replied. "Plenty of myths out there about monsters that go after the kids themselves, mostly meant to scare kids into obeying so they don't go getting themselves killed by more mundane means."

"Exactly. Like shtriga. But what if there was something that went after the caregivers? To... warn them to keep their attention on their charges, maybe?"

His eyes narrowed.

"I mean, that would be the reason for the myth, not that they'd go around warning people to do their jobs. That would be a pretty lame monster."

"Yeah, it would." He frowned. "This wouldn't have anything to do with the recent disappearances, would it?"

"Kinda? I mean, I did notice a common thread: history teacher, pediatric nurse, soccer coach, guidance counselor."

"Maybe that would be a monster trying to get at the kids by taking away all their guardian protectors? Not that I've ever heard of one of those, either."

Listing them out loud like that, though, gave Charlie another idea. One she wasn't about to bounce off this guy, but she decided she'd best tuck it away for Sam and Dean.

"Yeah, me neither," she said. "Just trying to find an angle that would tie it all together."

"You may not find it," he replied. "You may have to invent it for your story. Life isn't always as neatly packaged as fiction."

"Don't I know it." If it were, she'd totally be having tea with elves and racking up allies right about now. 

"Well, I've got class in a few," Prof. Morris said, reaching past her for a book on healing practices across cultures. "Good luck."

"Thanks."

Charlie sighed. Real-life role-playing sucked ass sometimes.

If what she was looking for was going to be here, she was pretty sure that dude would've known it. Maybe it was time to take a break.

~*~

Ben pulled out his bag and started putting some clothes in it. His mom had tried to get him to use an actual suitcase, but none of his friends were using suitcases, and he wasn't going to be the lone dork. Besides, it was just a weekend. Who needed a whole suitcase for a weekend? Okay, she did, when she went to one of her yoga things, but that was because she had to basically pack double the clothes: regular stuff to wear around all day and yoga clothes for when they were actually doing yoga. Ben, on the other hand, was only going to need t-shirts and jeans, socks and underwear. Period. End of story. Plenty of room in a backpack for that.

Of course, he thought long and hard about which t-shirts to bring. AC/DC, obviously, because they ruled. Detroit Lions, duh. He decided one more for good measure, just in case something got spilled on one of them. After much deliberation, he went with the latest Star Wars one. 

Jeans were easier. Jeans were jeans. Except he did make it a point to pack ones that weren't wearing through anywhere. Sure, it was some kind of trend to have your jeans deliberately worn-through in spots, but not to have them _actually_ wearing out.

He wasn't sure why it was so important that they have this weekend there. He was looking forward to it, sure. But the dorms weren't going to be a deciding factor unless they were incredibly gross or something, and it wasn't like they'd be sitting in on classes to see what they're like. Still, it was "part of the process," and he was looking forward to his first weekend away from home on his own.

Should he bring a book? He should probably bring a book. Not homework. Also nothing that would look too dorky. Or nerdy. Did it make more sense to bring a graphic novel? Or would it be better to stick with a basic paperback? Also, what did he actually think he might want to read?

_Call of Chthulu_ grabbed his attention. It wasn't his usual kind of thing, but he was pretty sure he'd never actually read it. When they'd gone into their old house to pack after the "incident," it had been lying open on his bed like he'd been reading it, but he couldn't remember a word. Just like all the other crap he couldn't remember. The shrinks had said crap about "traumatic association" and "interruption of memory coding" when they explained his memory gaps. Ben supposed this was just another one of those. The cover made it kind of look like a traumatic association all by itself, but that didn't mean anything.

And it did look cool.

He grabbed it off the shelf and shoved it into his bag with the clothes. Then he grabbed some underwear and socks, threw them in on top, and zipped the bag shut. Done! He didn't know why his mom always made such a big deal about packing. It was actually pretty easy.

He made quick work of putting the rest of the clothes away that had been stacked on his bed. Then he flopped down and grabbed his 3DS. A couple rounds of Fire Emblem Warriors before dinner should calm his pre-trip nerves. Not that he had any. At all. But if he was getting nervous about it, Mom needed not to be able to tell. She worried enough.

~*~

The internet remained as free of monsters that abducted people associated with kids as it had been earlier, so Charlie decided to see what Dean thought of her half-baked hypothesis.

[Are you kidding me?][I'm not. It's the only common thread I can find, and that does not seem to be a match for any ghosties, ghoulies, or beasties that I know of. Or that the entire internet including the darknet knows of. And, well, who is going to need a team of health and other providers?]

[Don't think kid's gonna be born playing soccer.]

[Fair. Also not going to school immediately.]

No more texts for a few minutes, then,

[You never know. These half-human types grow fast sometime.]

[Sensing a story.]

[Never.]

She sighed. Yeah, she should've figured he wouldn't elaborate.

[Texting you the deets on the missing. Keep an eye open?]

[Always.]

Charlie barely resisted the urge to reply with a Potter Puppet Pals video in response to that. Barely, but she did resist.

[Any luck with Rosemary's Baby?]

[Working on a meetup.]

Charlie hummed at that. Did that stuff ever go well for them?

[We'll ask if she knows anything about the disappearances.]

Charlie noticed he very blatantly didn't include her resurrection. And, well, she was actually okay with not being brought to the attention of Lucifer's spawn.

[BMoL dude brought the ADR.]

[Awesome, tyvm. Price?]

[Nvm.]

Awesome. They were definitely having this conversation again once they were face-to-face. Having a pair of protective “big brothers” was great, to a point, but they so needed to get past overdoing it.

[GTG]

[K]

It actually wasn't okay, but what else could she say? There were any number of reasons he might have to go, many of which were life-or-death. He probably just wanted out of the convo before she got him to spill something, but there was no way to know that for sure.

No leads. Nothing to do on a Thursday in this quiet little town. Someone somewhere probably had a D&D game going, but she hadn't found one posted anywhere. In the meantime, Charlie was antsy. It was partly just that she was thinking about tomorrow. 

Going for a walk was probably not ideal. She should totally just pull up Netflix and binge the latest season of _Game of Thrones_. But she really felt like she needed to be physically moving, so, time to get her nighttime stroll on.

~*~

It had been a long day. Thursdays typically were, since Lisa taught sunrise, noon, and evening classes at the shop, plus the morning prenatal class at the hospital. She'd have to think about changing that up next month. Either drop the evening class or the sunrise class. Probably the sunrise class, since that would cost her the least to lose. That would bring the day down to a slightly more respectable ten hours.

Who was she kidding? With Ben heading off to college, she needed to be adding classes, if anything, never mind if she really did want to set up her own studio at some point. That was going to take a large chunk of start-up change, and so far her entire nest egg was going towards his college fund.

She set the alarm, locked the door, and stepped out into the cool spring night. Again, she caught a strong scent of lilacs or something. She had meant to look around earlier to see whose garden they were in. She didn’t remember seeing any at all last year.

She set her bag on the backseat of her car, only to have the thing tip over and spill everything onto the floor. With a groan, she leaned in and picked it all up, stuffing it back in randomly. This was, Dana would be quick to point out, the exact sort of thing she wouldn't have to deal with if she had her own studio and didn't have to lug her supplies around everywhere. Like she didn’t know that. Like she didn’t already want her own studio. She wanted it here, though, not back in Indiana.

Moving back to Indiana really wasn’t on her radar except when Dana put it there. Lisa and Ben had moved several times in the last few years, for one thing, and she didn't even really know why. Okay, sure, she wasn't going to stay in the house where Matt had died in a home invasion. No mystery there. But what was she doing in Battle Creek in the first place? She vaguely remembered moving out of Cicero not long after Ben's eighth birthday. Had she really done that just because she was creeped out by the string of bad luck the neighborhood had had? And then, why had she left the next house for Michigan?

That loop was a dangerous one. It led her to a place of questioning her sanity, her fitness as a mother, everything. She knew it was down to the injuries from the home invasion, same as Ben. She'd never question his sanity, right?

_Even though they could never tell us what, exactly, those injuries were, and we didn't have a mark on us. Stop. I dwell in the present moment._

With a huff, she set the bag behind the driver's seat so it would be pinned in place and she wouldn't have to pick it all up again, then straightened.

"Hi."

She spun around and found herself face to face with a man. A handsome man, sure, but... a strange man in the parking lot of her workplace at eight o'clock at night.

"Um, hi."

She slid her hand into her pocket and gripped her phone for reassurance.

"Beautiful night, isn't it?" he asked.

"Sure," Lisa replied. There was something familiar about the guy, but she couldn't place him. Maybe he came by the shop sometimes? Though, really, if that were true, she was pretty sure she'd remember him a lot more clearly. He wasn't just handsome, he was hot… in a scary chat-you-up-in-a-dark-parking-lot kind of way.

_But would you? When you don't even remember some guy you supposedly lived with for a whole year?_

"I'm just going to..." she reached behind her with her free hand to grab the handle of the car door, but he grabbed her wrist.

"Now don't be like that," he said, voice low and honey-sweet. "You'd think you weren't happy to see me."

"Dude, I don't _know_ you," she retorted, twisting her wrist out of his grasp. She stepped to the side so she was no longer trapped between him and the car. Of course, now she couldn't get into the car either. But if she could make it to the store, she could trip the alarm.

_Thirty seconds for it to go off if I use the key, and that's if I manage to use it at all. Better to break a window. Damn, I don't want to do that, but I'm not seeing many choices here._

"How can you not know me, Lis?" he asked. His expression shifted from creepy-charming to kicked-puppy-dog. "Did I really mean that little to you?"

"Sorry, no creepy stalkers coming to mind right now," she said, edging closer to the building.

"Don't you recognize me, Lis?" he pressed. His brow furrowed, making him look genuinely confrused. "It's me. Dean."

She didn't know anyone named Dean, though. Did she? She took another step backwards.

He took another step forward.

"Sorry, but I think you're barking up the wrong tree, pal," she said as firmly as she could.

"No, I don't think I am. You see, that's impossible." He squinted at her, jaw clenched. "Completely impossible."

"Uh huh." She took another step.

"Where are you going, anyway?" He still had her blocked from her car. "I can't believe you're running away from me again."

"Look, I'm sure this would be a whole lot less creepy if you were talking to the right person," she tried, "but you're not. Really. I. Don't. Know. You."

"Is that so?" He lunged for her.

Lisa ducked his grab and spun on her heel, almost losing her balance. She felt the breeze of his movement as he lunged for her again, and she put everything she could into throwing her phone at the display window.

It bounced off the glass. No alarm sounded.

"Seriously?" he laughed as he used her shoulders to turn her back around to face him. "Throwing away your phone? That's your play?"

"Not like you were gonna let me use it," she snapped. She did wish she had its reassuring weight back in her hand, but, yeah, this guy was never going to let her call 911.

"Well, no," he agreed, "but still."

His fingers dug into her flesh, and Lisa couldn't help but wince. She tried to remember everything—or anything—she'd ever learned about how to get out of a situation like this, but she was coming up blank. The alarm had been her best hope, and it hadn't gone off.

"Hey!" A woman’s voice called out from somewhere past the stalker guy.

His head whipped around, and for a second, she thought she saw long red hair overlaying the short light brown. His grip tightened.

"What's going on?" Footsteps were jogging closer, but Lisa couldn't see who it was.

"This creep thinks I'm someone I'm not," Lisa shouted.

"You!" the other woman called out.

Several things happened at the same time. The guy who called himself Dean let go of Lisa, giving her a little shove that made her stumble back a few steps. Lisa could see now that it was Charlie who'd showed up. Taking advantage of the distraction, Lisa ran up the stairs and whipped out her keys. Her hands were shaking as she tried to find the right key and then get it into the lock.

"What the hell do you think you're doing here?" Charlie demanded.

Did she know this guy? 

The door opened. Lisa knew she should probably get inside, but Charlie was still out there with this weirdo, and whether she knew him or not, that was no good. Instead, she grabbed her phone from where it had landed on the porch and quickly dialed 911, keeping her eyes firmly trained on her stalker and Charlie.

The guy looked between Lisa and Charlie several times, then ran off towards the woods, Charlie actually chasing after him.

The alarm system started to beep out its warning, insisting that she put in the code to shut it up, and it actually took an act of will to resist the well-trained reflex of dashing for the keypad to punch that code in. Instead, she ran to the far side of the porch and tried to see where Charlie and the guy had gone.

"911, what's your emergency?"

"Some guy just tried to grab me as I was leaving work." She rattled off the address when prompted, then started into a description. 

The alarm finally went off.

Charlie came back out of the woods, looking up at Lisa wildly.

"Are you okay? Did she do anything to you?"

"What? Yeah, yeah I'm fine. Or not... fine, but not hurt." Then she looked down at her arm and saw that wasn't entirely true. She was going to be black and blue where he'd grabbed her, and there was a nick in her skin. "Badly, anyway."

Charlie was up on the porch with her in a minute, examining Lisa's injuries. She seemed more bothered by that scratch than the bruises.

"Damn, is it bleeding? Shit, it is." Charlie pursed her lips. "How do you feel?"

"Like some creepy asshole just tried to grab me and now this alarm isn't going to shut off until the cops give the okay to the alarm company." Her head was starting to hurt.

"Cops? Of course. Cops. Right.” Charlie sounded more worried about the cops than the stalker guy. “Do you have a first aid kit?"

She did, and digging that out of her glove box and letting Charlie fuss over her ate up the rest of the wait time until the cops got there.

It was sort of weird. Ben took care of his own bumps and bruises these days, but Lisa still thought of herself as the one whose job it was to clean scrapes and cuts and put band-aids on them, and now here she was, watching someone else do it for her. As she sat half in her car and Charlie squatted in front of her, it just all seemed so surreal. The sting of the alcohol wipe, the coolness of the antibiotic gel, and the secure feeling of having it well-covered once the bandage was on all felt like it was happening to someone else

"There." Charlie looked up and met Lisa's eyes. "You're all set."

"Thank you."

It was a shame that it felt like it was happening to someone else, because Lisa would actually have liked to kiss Charlie right then. But what good would that be if it didn't even feel like her doing it?

Of course, that's when the cops pulled in.

Once they all hopped out of their cars and determined that no one was in any immediate danger, things got... not boring but tedious. They gave the all-clear to the alarm company and gave the store a walk-through to make sure the guy hadn't gotten in somehow while they’d been busy outside. They took her statement and Charlie's, separately so they couldn't influence each other, Lisa guessed. It was when they compared notes that things got weird again.

"So, wait, you saw a tall guy, sandy brown hair?" the cop asked.

"Yes."

"And you saw a short woman with long red hair?"

"Exactly."

"Wait, what?" both Lisa and Charlie asked.

"Sounds like maybe a team-up?" one officer suggested.

"But..." Lisa was about to say that no, the guy had been alone, but then why did Charlie see something so different? "Maybe I just didn't see the woman."

Charlie looked like she was going to say something else, but then didn't.

"All right, well... we'll see what we can see. Neither of you knew who they were?"

"No," they answered in stereo. Which was also odd, because hadn't Charlie recognized at least one of them?

"Then unless you see them somewhere else and call it in, I'm not holding out a lot of hope we'll find them. I'd like you to come down to the station tomorrow to sit with a sketch artist, though."

Lisa nodded. She noticed that Charlie didn't.

The cops eventually left, and then it was just Lisa and Charlie in the parking lot. 

"So you really saw some tall dude with brown hair?" Charlie asked.

"And you didn't? I mean, he was right there, and I heard you. It sounded like you knew him."

"Not him," Charlie said. "Her."

"How is that possible?" Lisa asked. "I mean, I know the cops think we're either crazy or lying, but I know what I saw."

"Yeah," Charlie said. "Me, too. I've actually got some friends I can ask about that, though they're kind of... not unreachable but not exactly available right now."

"What, are they experts on eyewitness discrepancies or something?"

"Y'know, that's actually kinda true," Charlie said, clearly latching onto the easy out. "They're FBI. Once they wrap up the case they're on, I'll see if they can come check this out."

"Um, why would the FBI come here for this? I mean, don't get me wrong, I want this guy caught, but, isn't it kind of small potatoes?"

Charlie took a deep breath. "What if these people have something to do with the disappearances? What if they were trying to disappear you? Multiple kidnappings tend to draw that sort of attention, even if nobody’s crossed state lines."

Lisa wasn't sure how she felt about the possibility that she just almost got kidnapped. She wasn't sure if that was better or worse than any of the scenarios she'd dreamed up. She supposed it didn't really matter, since none of them had happened.

"I need to get home to Ben," she said at last.

"Right. Of course." Charlie lifted a hand in Lisa's direction, then let it fall. "See you tomorrow night still?"

"Yeah." Lisa forced a smile. 

Neither of them moved.

"Considering you just saved me from we-don't-even-know-what," Lisa said at last, "I think at the very least I owe you a ride back to your motel."

"I won't say no to that." Charlie's smile looked a bit forced as well.

They got into the car and Lisa drove to the motel. It wasn't that far, which probably explained why Charlie had been walking by. Well, not entirely, but it explained why it wasn't completely ridiculous.

Lisa had never really noticed this motel. That was probably because it was completely nondescript. Faded paint, sign that didn't light up. Nothing to grab the eye. 

Lisa pulled into the spot next to Charlie's car.

"Thanks for the lift."

"Thanks for saving the day."

Charlie didn't move to get out, though she did take off her seatbelt. 

"I'm glad you're okay. Let me know if that cut... bothers you."

"Okay."

They sat listening to Lisa's engine tick and feeling the cool early-spring breeze drift in through the cracked windows.

"I should probably go in," Charlie said. "You're burning up gas sitting here like this."

"Yeah." Lisa was tempted to just cut the engine. If wasting gas is the problem, that'd be the obvious solution. But there was a tension in the air that had nothing to do with the car.

Before she could talk herself out of it, Lisa was unclasping her seat belt so she could lean over, cup Charlie's face in her hands, and press their lips together. And for the first second or two, she was afraid Charlie was going to pull away, that she'd read the entire situation wrong, and she wanted to crawl under the seat or possibly under the car.

Then Charlie kissed her back, sliding fingers into Lisa's hair and parting her lips in invitation. With a swell of relief, Lisa licked into Charlie's mouth, sliding their tongues together as she traced her fingers down Charlie's neck.

When they parted for air, Lisa wondered if Charlie was going to invite her in. She wondered if she'd accept. She didn't wonder long. She knew she would, because waiting for tomorrow night's date now seemed extravagantly stupid. Anything could have happened tonight, and anything could happen between now and tomorrow evening, and why in the world would waiting be a good plan?

"I should go," Charlie said, pulling back just a bit. "You have work in the morning."

That, right now, was the least of Lisa's concerns. But she pulled back reluctantly, allowing her hand to drift down Charlie's arm as she did, lingering oh so briefly when her fingertips brushed over the back of Charlie's hand.

"Okay," she finally said. "Right."

"We still have that dinner date tomorrow night, though, right?" Charlie asked.

"Yeah, we do," Lisa said. "Thank you, Charlie. For everything tonight."

Charlie smiled. Then she opened the door, got out of the car, and let herself into her motel room.

Lisa sighed as she turned to back up the car and head home. She didn't think she'd be able to get to sleep for awhile tonight.


	4. Chapter 4

Once she was inside her motel room, Charlie leaned her back against the door, tons of stuff tumbling through her head. First and foremost, what the hell had she just done?

Seriously, since when did she tell a hot woman who was clearly into her and kissed like she'd been born to it that she'd "better go"? Okay, sure, feelings were running high right now because of whatever the hell that whole incident outside the shop had been, but was that really a problem? They could both be in here, right now, riding that energy and each other till dawn if they wanted to. And clearly, Charlie wasn't the only one who wanted to. 

She'd seen the disappointment when Lisa said "okay." She'd felt the longing in that slow caress along her arm, and when Lisa had practically stopped with their hands still touching, Charlie had wanted to just flip her own hand over and lace their fingers together like a couple of schoolgirls on their first date.

At least they still had a first date coming up, but if Charlie was going to get any rest tonight, she had to do something about all this pent-up energy. If she thought she'd felt restless before, that was nothing compared to this, but no walk was going to do the trick.

She took her time getting washed up but didn't bother changing into her pajamas, just draped her jeans over the back of the rickety chair and slipped her bra off without removing her t-shirt. Climbing under the covers, she wished for a moment she'd found someplace a little nicer, because the sheets were kind of rough and she could only hope they bleached the hell out of them.

Once under the covers, she killed the light and closed her eyes, summoning every second of that delicious kiss back to mind. Lisa's lips had been soft and tasted slightly of some kind of spice. Her hair was sleek and silky between Charlie's fingers, and her hands were as gentle and firm as they framed Charlie's face as they had been repositioning her on the mat.

And oh, yes, the feeling of Lisa's hands on her shoulders and hips were seared into Charlie's memory too. She sighed in memory and ran her hands over her breasts, first just feeling them through the cloth of the t-shirt and then slipping underneath the fabric to roll her nipples between her fingertips.

If Lisa's lips tasted like spice, what would the rest of her skin taste like? Her hair smelled like coconut, but Charlie couldn't recall any other scent. So she didn't wear perfume, at least not every day. Would she tomorrow night? Charlie imagined kissing her way down Lisa's neck, pausing to breathe her in and lick at her pulse point. Maybe she'd smell like flowers. Maybe she'd smell like musk. Maybe she'd just smell like her. It was all good.

Damn, if she had her here right now, Charlie would be ripping that ratty sweatshirt off her and then peeling her out of that snug yoga top. Was it the kind with the built-in bra? Charlie decided it was for now, because then she could get right to the business of worshiping those gorgeous breasts of hers. Would Lisa be one of those women who could get off from breast play alone? Or would she want to get right down to business? Charlie decided somewhere in between would work for now, and she'd find out for sure tomorrow. She'd pull Lisa down onto the bed with her and climb over her, kissing and licking at her breasts, grazing the nipples with her teeth. She pinched at one of her own nipples at the thought, and the heat pooling between her legs had her parting them reflexively.

She'd work her way down Lisa's body, teasing her with kisses along her belt line and touches over her yoga pants. Would she be able to tell through them if Lisa was wet already? Who cared, she'd have her naked soon enough. Charlie let her fingers trace through her own wetness as she wondered whether Lisa was the type of woman who shaved her pussy. Didn't matter either way, because Charlie was sure she'd taste sweet as honey. 

What would she sound like? If that little whimpering noise she'd made in her throat when Charlie had touched her hair was any indication, she'd be pretty vocal. Charlie imagined the variations on that sound she would make as Charlie licked her open and set to the business of taking her apart. She circled her fingers closer and closer, finally stroking at her clit as she imagined doing the same to Lisa with her tongue. Lisa would probably be the type to wrap her legs behind Charlie's neck as she got close. Maybe Charlie would slip a finger or two inside her as she got close, curving and thrusting until she found the spot that would make her cry out. And once she'd found it, she'd just keep kissing and licking and stroking until Lisa's walls shuddered around her fingers and Lisa arched and shouted as she came.

Charlie bit back her own cries as she did. No point to making noise without someone there to appreciate it and with who-knew-who on the other side of the motel wall.

As she came down, Charlie turned to one side, grabbed a tissue from the box beside the bed, and cleaned off her fingers. She stayed on her side as she wondered whether Lisa would ask her to stay the night tomorrow. Was she the cuddly type or the type who needed her space to sleep? Grabbing one of the pillows and hugging it to her, Charlie decided that dream!Lisa was a cuddler, anyway, and that she'd be the little spoon with Charlie curved protectively around her.

Lisa could've gone missing tonight. Or worse. Hell, they both could have. Charlie shuddered. She wasn't going to worry about that now, though. Tomorrow she'd go back into research mode and try to figure out what the hell Rowena's game was. For tonight she just hoped the talisman she'd snuck into Lisa's bag would be enough to protect her.

~*~

Five o’clock came way too early. That wasn't usually Lisa's opinion, but today it sure was. She felt like she could have slept for days and still been tired after last night.

Work to be done, though. She went through her own morning yoga practice on autopilot, the exact opposite of how she wanted to, but at least on the physical side she was more prepared to face the day once she was done. She hadn't been able to quiet her mind to meditate during savasana, though, instead running through the events of last night on a loop. 

_Probably just as well. The way this morning is starting, I'd have fallen back to sleep._

She showered quickly and had Ben's breakfast ready by the time he stumbled into the kitchen and plunked himself on his stool at the breakfast bar, still rubbing at his eyes. A feeling of déjà vu swept over Lisa as she heaped eggs and bacon onto his plate, stealing back a small piece for herself.

"Mom," he protested weakly, just like always. 

It was a familiar routine. The weirdness of this morning was the only reason it felt in any way different. 

"Still leaving right from school?" Lisa asked.

"Yeah. There's this welcome thing tonight. We should just make it."

"Eric still driving?"

"Yep. He's the only one with a vehicle big enough for all of us."

She heard what he didn't say. Eric was also one of the few of Ben's friends who had their own vehicle. And of course Ben wanted one. What teenage boy didn't want his own car? But he knew it was impossible, so he never said anything. 

"I'm glad the five of you are going together," she said. "Even if you don't all decide to go there, I think checking it out together was a good idea."

"Pretty sure we will," he said. "I mean, I'm pretty sure we'll all apply. Danny's worried he won't get the SAT scores to make the cut."

Lisa nodded sympathetically. She remembered that routine and was glad Ben was confident enough in his own academic abilities not to be doubting himself like that. Hell, he should be applying to the Ivy League, but the only way he could go would be with a full scholarship. She hoped he'd at least apply, anyway.

He tossed back his coffee and put his plate and mug in the dishwasher before turning to go back upstairs to get ready for school.

"Hey, c'mere." She pulled him into a hug and laughed when he dropped a kiss onto her head like she used to do when he was smaller. "You be careful, you hear me?"

"You know I will, Mom."

"I'm serious. No keggers. And call me when you get there!"

He laughed as he pulled away and ran upstairs.

Lisa cleaned the pans and the stove and took stock of the dishwasher before putting her own dish in. There was still plenty of room, but she thought she'd probably run it later anyway. A quick inventory of the fridge told her what she'd need to buy at the grocery store later. 

With the last of her to-dos checked off, she grabbed her bag from its hook by the door and headed off to work, calling out a good-bye to Ben as she did, and if she was extra careful locking up (which was silly, since Ben was going to have to unlock and re-lock the front door anyway), she was absolutely not being paranoid.

~*~

[It's Rowena.]

[Good morning 2 u 2. What is?]

[Who's been making ppl disappear.]  
[Caught her in the act last night.]  
[Well, didn't catch her.]

[Shit.]

[Yeah.]  
[How's ur case going?]

[Had a shot. Screwed the pooch.]

[Sorry.]  
[Bad night all around.]

[Yeah. No idea where they are now.]

[Any chance they'd team up with the wicked bitch?]

[Not on purpose. L already killed her once.]

Charlie wasn't sure what to say to that. She was in no position to make cracks about anyone coming back from the dead.

[U think she brought me back?]

[Y would she?]

[IDK. Nothing good.]

[Someone told me once that good things do happen.]

[Don't think an angel brought me back. No hand print.]

[It's creepy that you know that stuff.]

[It's all Chuck's fault.]  
[God's fault.]  
[Whatever.]

The image of the graphic novel version of Dean pulling a gun on Chuck flashed through Charlie's mind and she was tempted to laugh hysterically. Seriously, how was that squirrelly dude God?

[Thot u said psychic saw fairy dust in your aura.]

[Leftover Oz? Might not be related.]

[She'd have to use BotD. That'd leave a mark.]

That was a fair point. The _Book of the Damned_ was really the only thing that would give a witch, even a witch like Rowena, power over life and death like that. And no way the residue from that would look like faerie realm energy. Charlie shuddered at the thought. That book definitely gave off a slimy vibe.

Charlie glanced at the clock. She was so not up for daybreak yoga. Besides, she thought she'd probably spontaneously combust if Lisa had to reposition her now, even (or especially?) after last night’s “stress relief.” But she was going to have to go over to the shop and ask Brigid if Rowena had been in, and if so, what she'd bought. Though, knowing Rowena, she'd just find a way to _Accio_ what she needed while it was closed. Was that maybe why she’d been there last night?

And what kind of spell was she using that made Lisa see her as a dude? Possibly more importantly, why could Charlie see through it?

[When is it ever 2 things?]

Charlie shoved the phone in her pocket and grabbed her car keys off the bureau. No matter what her next move was, she'd need breakfast first. The phone didn't chime again until she was in the car.

[Never.]

Yeah. That was the problem.

~*~

The whole class had just felt off this morning. That probably had something to do with the incredible lack of sleep that Lisa had gotten last night. It probably also had something to do with the fact her mind was already grocery shopping for dinner. The last thing she wanted to deal with was Maisy's neurosis today.

"But what if I want my intention to be about my low back pain going away? Can't that be a positive?"

Lisa took a deep breath.

_I dwell in the present moment._

"There are a lot of ways to make that a positive," Lisa said. "How about 'my body moves easily'"?

"But it could move easily and still hurt."

"My back is strong and healthy?"

"Still doesn't say the pain is gone. Isn't it a positive if the pain goes away?"

"Well, I suppose you could try it and see how it goes," Lisa finally said. 

Maisy's eyes opened wide and her mouth hung slightly open for a second before she snapped it shut. "You mean I can just test it out?"

"Ye-es." Lisa shrugged. "Somebody tried the standard formula, discovered it worked, and so that's what I teach. Maybe you'll discover something else."

It was almost comical how quickly Maisy got her stuff together and left after that. Lisa hoped she'd discover something that worked for her, because she was clearly struggling to find something.

Of course, Lisa couldn't be that judgmental of the fact Maisy changed her intention at least every couple of days. She'd hung onto her own for quite awhile now, and they weren't meant to be static like that. Then again, it worked, or at least it felt like it did. It was a useful touchstone when she felt herself getting un-grounded.

Not that it had helped—or even come to mind—when she was attacked last night. She'd been a little busy being creeped out and trying to escape. Though now that she thought of it, she had been incredibly in the moment through all of that. She'd had to be. She supposed adrenaline did that in a fight or flight situation.

Too bad flight had been her only real option. But there was no way she was going to be able to fight back against that guy, not without years of martial arts training. He'd been easily six feet, and his grip had been like iron. She looked down at her bandaged arm. How had he even cut her? He hadn't been armed. Not that she'd seen anyway. 

Lisa gave herself a shake and finished packing up her bag. This morning's prenatal class was an early one, and she didn't have time to be zoning out like this. The sooner she got through that class and then the lunchtime one, the sooner she could start shopping and cooking for tonight. Now that was something worth thinking about.

~*~

"You're sure you haven't seen her?" Charlie asked.

"I'm pretty sure I'd remember someone who looked like that," Brigid replied. "Plus, you said Scottish accent? I mean, not that I can tell Scottish from English from Australian, but I haven't had any customers with strong accents like that like... ever. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this town isn’t exactly an international tourist attraction."

Charlie sighed. "It was a long shot."

"So, she was the one you saw? With the guy that went after Lisa?"

"There was just the one person," Charlie said. "I think she was using some kind of illusion spell, but I don't know why I could see through it."

"Huh. That'd be some pretty hefty illusion magic. Not just a slight shift or a blurring so you wouldn't recognize her but a full-on separate person, voice and all." Brigid rested her elbows on the glass display case full of pendants and athames, then rested her chin in her hands. "Maybe whatever faerie energies are hanging around you gave you some kind of immunity."

"Maybe." Charlie wasn't sold on that. None of it was adding up. She was tempted to tell Brigid more, tell her about the _Book of the Damned_ and the amount of power Rowena could wield with it. But just because she'd been helpful so far didn't mean it was safe to go around offering information like that. The fewer people who knew that book even existed, the better, as far as Charlie was concerned.

"You think she has anything to do with you being back?" Brigid asked.

"Maybe? I mean, I know she _could_ ," Charlie said, "I just don't know why she _would_."

"And you think she could have something to do with the disappearances?"

"Maybe. Dunno motive there either. But it's never two things, you know?"

"Yeah, that's just a thing hunters say. It's two things plenty of the time," Brigid retorted.

"For instance?"

"How many hunters have you met with a story about how they thought they were hunting one thing, and they found that one thing, only to find out it was another member of the same species causing the havoc while the one they found first was trying to get it under control?" 

"At least two," Charlie admitted. "Is that really two things, though?"

"And how many have you heard talk about some witch or wizard or whatever that conjured something they couldn't handle?"

"Huh." Charlie pondered that for a minute. That sounded more likely than any theories she'd come up with yet. "Still two. Same two. No, three, actually."

Hell, by definition there were at least two things in town anytime they worked a case with Cas, right? 

"I mean, she could've been playing around with shit she shouldn't," Charlie mused aloud. "Kinda her thing. Then lost control of whatever. Doesn't explain why she'd be making herself look like a dude, but..."

"Worth taking a look at."

"Oh, hell, yeah."

The bell rang as the door opened.

"Seriously, you've got to tell me how you have that rigged," Charlie said.

Brigid just shook her head.

"Hey, you," Lisa said as she headed for the steps. 

"Hey," Charlie replied with her best smile.

"Pick you up at five?" Lisa asked.

"Works for me."

Charlie turned back to face Brigid as Lisa headed upstairs to get her midday class set up. Brigid had her fixed with a stony stare.

"What?"

"If you break her heart," Brigid said, tapping all ten of her fingers against the glass case, "there'll be _three_ things you have to watch out for."

"It's not like she doesn't know I'm not staying," Charlie said. It sounded thin even to her.

"That's no guarantee, and I can tell you know it," Brigid said. She stilled her hands.

There wasn't really anything to say to that, so Charlie just shrugged as she put her phone back into her pocket. 

"I'm serious, Charlie. I'm not saying she's some fragile flower, but the last thing she needs is to be loved and left."

"Then I guess I'd better make it clear it's not love," Charlie said. "I'll see you later."

She fled to her car before Brigid could say anything else.

She was right, though. It had been obvious from the tremble in Lisa's hands. Charlie might or might not be her first woman, but she was definitely the first person of any gender in a long while. Maybe even since Ben's dad? Charlie hoped not. Not that she knew how long he'd been out of the picture, but she had the impression that Lisa and her kid had been on their own for a while.

Nothing she could do about any of that, and like hell she was going to take a pass on their date tonight. She wasn't sure how long it had been since Lisa's last date, but it had definitely been at least two years for Charlie, and she wasn't about to count out how long it had been before she'd died. She hadn't actually done much full-on dating since she'd started hunting, come to think of it. That was just depressing. She was turning into Dean without the repression and oh-so-obvious pining.

Oh hell no. She was not canceling tonight. Besides, she rationalized, that would hurt Lisa, too.

She turned the key and listened to the engine for a minute before making a three-point turn and pulling out of the parking lot. She had work to do before tonight.

~*~

It wasn't until she'd just about gotten to the grocery store that Lisa realized there was something else she needed to do today.

"Damn," she muttered as she slowed and turned to pull into the police station. This was going to take time she didn't want to spend. But, then, she did want this guy—and the woman Charlie had seen if they were a team—caught before they could either come back after her or go after anyone else.

They wouldn't come back after her, would they? She had to be a random target, right? There was no reason anyone should target her specifically.

_Because lots of people have fatal home invasions and then get attacked in a parking lot for no reason._

She shook that off as she got out of the car and headed inside.

The detective who'd taken her statement last night led her over to the artist and introduced her. She did her best to describe the guy who'd grabbed her, but she was pretty sure she failed miserably, because the sketch that the artist worked up didn't look familiar at all.

"It's okay," the artist said. "Just tell me what's different."

"I just ... Each piece looks right. They just don't all look right together." Lisa sighed. This had been a complete waste of time. 

"Believe me, I hear that all the time," the artist said. "And it's probably enough to start with."

Lisa was pretty sure she was just saying that to make her feel better, but she went along with it so she could get out of there and back to the business of shopping for her dinner date.

That was what this was, right? That kiss had not been at all one-sided, so she was pretty sure it was a date. Then again, maybe that had just been a heat-of-the-moment kind of thing.

_Didn't look like that when she said she was good with you picking her up tonight._

Yeah, and what exactly had possessed her to do that? Was she that set on Charlie staying the night that she wanted her not to have her car? Who did that? She should call her or text her or something, but not only did Charlie not have Lisa's physical address, they hadn't even exchanged cell phone numbers.

Well, she was committed now. That changed her dinner plans a bit. She'd need something that could be left in the oven while she went to pick Charlie up.

That decided, Lisa grabbed her purse and headed into the store.

~*~

The internet sucked.

Okay, that was a lie. It just wasn't coughing up the specific information Charlie needed right now, and _that_ sucked. Then again, did she really think she was going to find anything, even on the dark web, to explain how to cast a spell to make oneself not only look but sound completely different to two different people? Because Brigid was right about one thing: there was apparently plenty out there about how to make yourself unnoticeable, or maybe just a bit different, enough not to be recognized maybe. But nothing about making a petite, redheaded Scottish witch look and sound like a tall American dude.

Admittedly, even the _Book of the Damned_ probably didn't have anything quite that specific either, and that actually sounded kind of tame in comparison to stuff like the Mark of Cain, but wherever a spell like that existed, it would be comparable. And also not electronic. Or probably even in English. 

This was... annoying didn't quite cut it, and neither did frustrating. But seriously, give her something to work with, and Charlie would be all over it. Ancient Sumerian encoded in some obscure way? She'd get to cracking it. But this... this was like looking for a needle in a haystack when you weren't entirely sure what a needle looked like and, oh by the way, there was no hay for miles.

Still, she'd managed to find that damned book (pun lame but fully intended) when almost every source had said it was a myth. They'd been myth-taken. This was just a different puzzle, and if there was one thing Charlie was good at, it was puzzles.

She glanced at the clock. It was almost four. Probably about time to start getting ready. Not that she had a ton of options for what to wear. This was a pretty casual date, so it wasn't like she needed to be all dressed up, but that didn't mean she couldn't put some effort in. She powered the tablet down and looked in the tiny closet.

She was actually going to have to do laundry tomorrow, she realized. Also, if Lisa was picking her up (and how had that happened?) she'd have to be a little creative about having some options for tomorrow morning. Or plan on taking a Lyft if things didn't go well after all. Because while that make-out session had been awesome, and Charlie was pretty confident, she always had an exit strategy. This town probably didn't have many drivers, though, especially late at night, so she hoped Lisa didn't live too far if she ended up having to walk back here.

Getting ahead of herself here, though. For now, it was really down to whether she was going to wear the suit-like thing she'd gotten in case she needed to be Agent Scott anytime soon (no and no) or the bright pink t-shirt with a pair of jeans. She tried the t-shirt with the dress pants, which was maybe a little better, but it didn't feel like her. The whole corporate look was for her FBI persona. It was a costume no less than the leather jerkin she wore on Moondoor weekends, and Charlie really wanted to just be herself tonight.

Well, within reason.

T-shirt and jeans it was. At least they were new?

Charlie sighed and peeled the outfit back off so she could take a shower.

~*~

It was just before five when Lisa pulled up next to Charlie's quirky car. It made Lisa smile just looking at it, which she tried to put a lid on. Hello, motel? Charlie wasn't from around here and probably wouldn't be staying much longer. This was strictly a fun weekend. She used to know how to do this, so she could remember and do it again.

Dana would be so proud.

Still, she wasn't going to be that date that stayed outside and beeped, so she turned her car off and got out to knock on the door. She didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until Charlie opened the door and knocked it out of her. Which was stupid, because she'd just seen her earlier, and she was just wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but both looked different than the ones she'd had on earlier. Lisa suddenly felt much less silly about the time she'd spent contemplating which outfit to wear, relieved that she'd settled on a v-neck sweater and jeans.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"Ready to go?" 

"Almost. Anything I should bring?"

"Toothbrush?" That shouldn't feel so daring to say.

Charlie's answering grin was reassuring. 

The drive back to the house was filled with empty chatter. Apparently, Charlie hadn't found anything too amazing to photograph for her job today. That wasn't surprising, because as much as she loved this town, Lisa would be the first to say it wasn't really remarkable. They did exchange numbers on the way. Well, Lisa rattled off hers while Charlie snapped a photo to go with it in her contacts and sent her a text of a winkie-face emoji so that Lisa would have hers.

Once they got to the house, Lisa was nervous again. There was some kind of line being crossed here, bringing Charlie home as opposed to if they had, say, spent the night in Charlie's motel room last night. 

"Wow," Charlie said as they stepped inside. "Yoga must pay better than I thought."

"It's just a rental," Lisa said. "But I do okay."

She gave Charlie a quick tour of the first floor, showing her the small kitchen and the half-bath under the stairs, which was good for a Harry Potter joke. The living room got a minute or two as Charlie scanned the DVD collection, and then Lisa led her to the dining area. She hoped it wasn't obvious how little use it got, but the breakfast bar was really where she and Ben mostly ate, regardless of what time of day it was.

"Take your coat?" she offered.

"Why thank you," Charlie said with a smile that said she knew exactly how pretentious they both sounded.

Lisa cracked first, and then they both laughed. Lisa could feel the tension shatter around them like a Christmas ornament letting the figurines inside step out.

Dinner went smoothly enough after that. The steak turned out just fine, and the wine Charlie had brought went with it nicely. Dessert had taken a little more thought, but it seemed that was a success too as Charlie hummed her appreciation around the chocolate-covered strawberries.

She left the choice of movie to Charlie and was not at all surprised when she chose Star Wars.

"I can't believe you have the original-original, not to mention a VCR to play it on," Charlie gushed. "Most people these days don't even realize the remakes are remakes."

"Oh, please," Lisa said. "Han totally shot first."

"Right?" Charlie grinned as she handed over the videocassette. "Plus there was no reason to insert Jabba. The mystery was better."

"Exactly! Not knowing who or what he was made him that much more terrifying than just a giant slug. Not that a giant slug of a crime lord isn't terrifying."

"Pretty sure that's terrifying even without the crime lord part," Charlie agreed.

"True enough." Lisa popped the cassette into the VCR and hit play as Charlie bounded over to the couch. "Still, the point remains."

Charlie nodded as if to concede the point as she took a sip of her wine. Lisa joined her on the couch, hoping she was guessing what was not-too-close-but-not-too-far.

Dana was right. It had been too long.

Oh well. None of that mattered tonight. Lisa settled into the couch and pushed play.

~*~

"You're sure you haven't heard anything from Rowena?" Dean asked. Sam looked pissed, but he really didn't get to do that.

"Dude, no. Believe me, if I thought she had anything to do with Charlie being back, even if I _had_ been in contact with her, which I haven't, I sure as shit would've said something, and I wouldn't be denying it now." He ran his fingers through his shaggy hair. 

"Okay, okay." Dean paced the war room of the bunker. Too much was happening too quickly. They'd missed their shot at Kelly Kline and Dagon, gotten a Man of Letters killed and Eileen was on their most wanted list and on the run to Ireland. Now this. "But do you know how to reach her?"

Sam sighed. "I've got a number. No idea if it still works."

Dean was about to tell him to try it, but Sam already had the phone in his hand and was thumbing through his contacts. It took long enough for the call to go through that Dean was half expecting to hear that the number was out of service.

"Rowena, what are you doing going after Charlie?" Sam pulled the phone away from his ear and put it on speaker. He set it down on the table and took a seat. Dean joined him.

"Why, hello to you too, Samuel. Now, what in the world are ye on about?"

"Last night Charlie caught you trying to kidnap her girlfriend," Sam said. "You were wearing some glamor, but she saw through it."

"My, my, what a busy evening I must have had to manage all that in between hiding from _Lucifer's foul minions_."

"Not so crazy about him anymore, huh?" Dean asked.

"Ye know full well he wants me dead. Again." She paused. "Speaking of which, how in the world would I be bothering poor Charlene, when ye already got the poor lass killed?"

"Kinda wondering if you've got anything to do with that, too," Sam said.

"Aye, ye're both completely daft. I dinna know what my son sees in either of you. Especially you, Dean."

Dean scoffed and shifted in his chair. Bitch didn’t know what she was talking about.

"While I admit, I did grow somewhat fond of the lass, I'm hardly going to go about resurrecting people unless I need them for something. And I do not, at the moment, have any great need for a 'nerd.'"

Dean could practically hear the air quotes. "Really? Because if there's something in the _Book of the Damned_ or that _Codex_ that you need help decrypting, I'm thinking she's exactly who you'd want on the job, considering she cracked it once."

"True, true. But her work was absolutely brilliant. I've not had a lick of trouble since ye so kindly shared her decryption key with me."

Dean glared at Sam.

"Still, if she is back among the living, then I shall know who to look for if I do need help decoding another ancient text."

Great. Not that any of this made any sense, but if Rowena really hadn't known Charlie was back before, she did now.

"You still haven't answered my question," Sam said. 

"Really? I thought I had. Let me spell it out for ye, then: I have neither seen nor been anywhere near Miss Charlene Bradbury. So, the lass did not see through a glamor, she was taken in by one."

Sam had pulled over his laptop and was tapping away on it.

"What the hell kind of glamor works differently on different people?" Dean demanded. 

"Wouldn't ye like to know." Pause. "Well, if ye would like to know, then my question is what is in it for me?"

"We don't help Lucifer hunt you down and kill you?" Dean offered. That was about all he was willing to give her.

"Not a very compelling threat when you're the ones hunting him."

"I mean, if he wants you that badly, and he were to offer us a deal..." Dean left the sentence hanging.

"Ye really would." Rowena gave what sounded like an exasperated sigh. "That would be very complex magic indeed, and I canna imagine why anyone would bother. If Charlene saw me, then who, might I ask, did the other lass see?"

"Dean." Sam shut the phone off and turned the laptop to face him.

There, on the Kalamazoo local news website was a police sketch that, while it wasn't great, was very obviously Dean.

"Son of a bitch."

~*~

There was nothing like a good jump-scare to close the gap when your date was sitting just that little bit too far away. And even knowing it was coming, Charlie jumped when the alien eyeball periscoped out of the muck in the trash compactor. If she happened to direct her trajectory closer to the beautiful woman sitting next to her, well, there had been a fifty-fifty chance of that, right? Not to mention that Lisa had done exactly the same thing.

"What I want to know," Lisa said after they'd settled back down, now shoulder to shoulder, "is how that thing survives in there without being crushed to death."

"I'm good with hand-waving that one," Charlie said, gesturing as she spoke, which made it much very convenient to settle her hand on Lisa's knee. "Some stuff's just better if you don't question it, you know?"

"Yeah," Lisa breathed.

Lisa's phone rang.

Charlie just managed not to swear as Lisa slid away and answered the thing. Instead, she grabbed the remote and paused the movie. Just because they'd both seen it umpteen times was no reason to miss any of it.

"Ben! Hi." Lisa mouthed "sorry" before stepping out of the living room.

Charlie sighed and took a sip of her wine. This was just a minor setback, or so she hoped. Unless the poor kid got a flat tire or something, which would suck. For him. Would suck for him until they managed to get a tow truck to him. Except, wouldn't a seventeen-year-old kid know how to change a tire?

It was probably not a great sign that Charlie was sitting here fretting about her one-night stand's kid. It must be the hunting gig. Made her extra protective of, like, everyone. Not that she wouldn't have cared before, but she probably wouldn't have been sitting here making plans to triangulate the nearest service station with road service once she got the coordinates off the kid's phone. Good grief, she hadn't even met him.

That was so not the point, and she knew it, but she firmly ignored it with an emphatic swallow of the last of her wine. She looked around the living room instead. She already knew what the shelf of DVDs and videocassettes held. The photos on the mantle above the fireplace were mostly of Ben, sometimes with friends, sometimes with someone who looked like she might be Lisa’s sister or cousin. Not much in the way of extended family, though, which made Charlie a little sad. Yeah, she definitely needed to pull way the hell back.

Lisa chose that minute to come back in, setting her phone down on the end table and sitting more or less where she'd been earlier.

"Sorry about that. I forgot I'd told Ben to call when he got in, and then he had to tell me about everything he's seen in the first five minutes."

"That's actually kinda adorable," Charlie said, surprised to find she actually meant it.

"It is, isn't it?" Lisa laughed, her cheeks flushing and eyes bright. "All right, where were we?"

"Trying to brace the trash compactor walls."

"Right." Lisa grabbed the remote and slid over to Charlie, pressing right up against her shoulder. "Shall we pick up where we left off?"

"Works for me," Charlie replied, resting her hand back on Lisa's knee.

~*~

"What the hell, man?" Dean threw his hands up as he rounded the table for the third time, coming back face to face with ... himself. "I mean, what the hell?"

"I don't know, Dean."

"So who is this other witness? Someone we know?"

"Not named." Sam clicked through several tabs, all with the same news story. All with the same witness whose name was being withheld. "This one says she was leaving work when she was attacked, so I guess they're hoping the attacker won't be able to track her home."

"Because monsters and witches rely on the Yellow Pages all the time." Dean snorted.

"That's the... never mind." Sam grabbed his phone and tapped at it.

"What, you're calling Rowena back? How's she gonna help us? Pretty sure she was telling the truth for once."

"Texting Charlie to find out who this new girlfriend of hers is and figure out why she saw you."

Dean had to hand it to her. Back from the dead for, what, three days and already dating? It had taken him weeks the first time he came back. Though there was the added hell factor which, no way could Charlie have... no way.

_Fairy energy, not hell energy. That's what the psychic said. Fairy energy._

Sam's phone chimed.

"What's she say?"

"'What did I tell you two about rockin' tents?'"

Dean snickered. "That's my girl."

The phone chimed again. Sam paled.

"What?"

Sam didn't say anything, just stared at his phone.

"Dude, what?" Dean stalked over to look for himself, but Sam put his gigantor hand over the screen. With an eyeroll, Dean knocked his hand away and grabbed the phone. It took a second to turn the screen back on and get past his lock screen.

"Dean, I don't think..."

"Lisa?"

~*~

"Anything important?" Lisa asked as Charlie shut off her phone's screen and set it back down next to the empty wine glass.

"Just those FBI friends I told you about," Charlie said. "Doing a little more digging."

Lisa smiled. "Tell them I said thanks. And thank you for getting them to help."

"You can tell them yourself," Charlie said. "They'll probably be here in a day or two. Their other case must have wrapped up."

That was encouraging. Sounded like these guys moved fast. Lisa wasn't going to feel completely safe until someone caught that guy.

"Enough about them," Charlie said. "Do you want to get back to the movie?"

"Not really," Lisa admitted. She turned back to the screen, picked up the remote and stopped the tape. 

"Oh?" Charlie arched an eyebrow.

"Yeah." Lisa took a deep breath and plunged ahead. "I'd actually kind of like to pick up where we left off last night."

The words were barely out of her mouth when Charlie's lips pressed against hers. She tasted like wine and chocolate and strawberries, and Lisa couldn't help but sigh into the kiss. If last night had been a little desperate, this was full-blown lust. She let Charlie press her back against the couch cushions, and she let her own hands slide first up Charlie's arms to her shoulders, then down to her waist. 

Lisa parted her lips and whimpered when Charlie kissed her way along Lisa's jaw and nipped at her ear. Lisa tightened her grip as Charlie nudged her knee between Lisa's and traced a finger first along Lisa's neckline and then down to follow the outline of a breast. Lisa arched into the touch, gasping when Charlie squeezed gently.

Gathering her wits, Lisa decided that as hot as the idea of continuing this here might be, they'd be much more comfortable in her bed. She used her grip on Charlie's waist to push her away just a bit, saying her name twice.

"You okay?" Charlie asked, her eyes wide.

"Very okay." Lisa smiled up at her. "Think we'd be more okay in a bed?"

"Hells, yeah." Charlie grinned at her and eased herself back and off of Lisa. 

Lisa levered herself up off the couch and pulled Charlie along by the wrist towards the stairs. They made it up a whole three steps before Lisa found herself pressing Charlie up against the wall, lacing their fingers together on either side of her head as she ravenously devoured her mouth. Charlie was so soft as Lisa pressed their breasts against one another, and she might not be the first woman Lisa had been with, but it had been long enough to take her breath away. 

This time it was Charlie who pushed her back and pulled her up the remainder of the stairs, letting Lisa take the lead again once she realized she had no idea which room was Lisa's.

Once they were in Lisa's room, she half wondered why she'd bothered setting out scented candles, since they were already tearing at each other's clothing and definitely not worrying at all about ambiance. She smirked with satisfaction when Charlie exclaimed at the first touch of the sheets though.

"Silk sheets?" Charlie asked. "You went all out."

"Anything worth doing's worth doing right," Lisa replied as she tugged Charlie's jeans the rest of the way off.

She was momentarily distracted by the tattoo on Charlie's hip when she tugged her panties down. Was that ...?

"I was drunk. It was Comic Con," Charlie practically whined. 

"Of course it was," Lisa said with a grin. She took a step back and tugged the rest of her own clothing off and out of the way before closing back in to trace the outline of the multi-sided die. "I didn't realize Leia played D&D."

"Hey, there had to be some way to pass the time on Alderaan."

Lisa closed the distance between them and kissed Charlie again, hand drifting from hip to breast and pausing to trace her thumb around her nipple. A tug from Charlie and they were both on the bed, Lisa looking down at Charlie and wondering just exactly how this was really happening.

She wasn't about to waste another minute, dipping her head so that she could take first one breast into her mouth, then the other as Charlie made soft, pleased sounds. Charlie's hands in her hair, holding her in place, were all the encouragement Lisa needed to alternate between teeth and tongue until Charlie tugged to bring her back up for another searing kiss.

Next thing she knew, Lisa was the one on her back, with Charlie kissing her way down her body, stopping to lavish attention on her breasts but very clearly not making this her last stop. Lisa couldn't help giggling when Charlie nibbled at her belly, but the giggles turned into a moan as the warmth of Charlie’s breath ghosted lower. Lisa caught herself holding her own breath as Charlie spread her open and took a first experimental taste, letting it out with a sigh as Charlie circled her tongue closer and closer, never quite reaching her clit until—a 

"Fuck!"

Charlie pulled back and looked up at her with a grin. "That's the general idea."

Lisa let her head drop back, one hand weaving itself into Charlie's hair and the other trying and failing to get a grip on the sheet beneath her. Then Charlie rested her head against Lisa's thigh, tracing her folds with a finger before pressing inwards. Lisa whimpered and shifted her hips upwards to take her in. Then Charlie's lips and tongue were back on her as her fingers pumped into her, and it was too much and not enough. Lisa could hear herself begging, though she didn't even know what she was pleading for, because Charlie showed no signs of stopping, driving her higher and higher until she cried out as her orgasm crashed over her.

Lisa was barely aware of Charlie climbing back up over her until she tasted herself on Charlie's lips and felt Charlie's own wetness as she rutted against Lisa's thigh. Lisa grabbed her ass and made to roll them over, but her muscles were still made of jello.

"Mm-mm," Charlie hummed into her mouth. "Just want to kiss you and ride you."

Lisa snaked a hand between them and thought she might just come again when she slid her fingers into Charlie's wet heat.

"Fuck, yeah," Charlie murmured against her lips before plunging her tongue through them to thrust against Lisa's as she rocked her hips, taking Lisa's fingers deeper with each thrust and grinding her clit against Lisa's palm. She sat up and threw her head back, lower lip gripped in her teeth. A whine from the back of her throat was all the sound she made before going rigid, her walls clenching around Lisa's fingers. 

All at once, she fell forward, hands planting on either side of Lisa's head, kissing her again, this time far more gently. She pulled back and rested her forehead against Lisa's.

"Hey."

"Hey."

A little shuffling around and they were both under the covers.

"Maybe next time we could light your candles?" Charlie sounded almost shy as she suggested that.

Lisa kissed her, just a short press of lips this time, and whispered, "Of course."

They might have only the weekend, or maybe even just tonight, but in that moment, Lisa was sure she'd give Charlie anything she wanted just to see that sparkle in her eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

Charlie woke up to the smell of coffee and bacon. She pried her eyes open then squinted them shut against the sunlight coming in the window. She reached out to grab her phone, but it wasn't on the nightstand. There was a regular alarm clock there, though, and it read 7 am.

Way too early for a Saturday, especially when there hadn't been much sleeping the night before.

She stretched, the silk sheets sliding against her skin. She was sore, but in all the ways that said what she already knew: last night had been awesome.

It took a minute to find her clothes. Finally she saw them, folded neatly on a pretty wooden chair by the window. Her bag, with toothbrush, was still downstairs, so that was going to have to wait. In the meantime, she found the bathroom. The shower looked tempting, but the lure of the coffee was stronger, so she settled for just freshening up a bit for now.

"Hey," Lisa said once Charlie reached the bottom of the stairs. "Breakfast is almost ready."

"And it looks like the coffee already is." Charlie sidled over to the coffee pot and filled the two mugs sitting next to it. They were identical, so she chose the one closest to her.

"Milk's in the fridge, sugar's on the breakfast bar." Lisa said, turning back to the stove.

Charlie dumped in two heaping spoonfuls of sugar and a splash of milk before taking a sip. Another splash of milk and it was perfect.

"Grab a seat, I'll be right over."

Charlie hopped up on one of the stools and rested her forearms on the counter top as she watched Lisa work. 

Lisa, clearly, had actually showered. Her hair was still even a bit damp. She'd put on one of her yoga tops with a lumberjack shirt over it. It was cute, but it also kind of sent a shiver down Charlie's spine. This airy kitchen was nothing like the bunker, but for a second it almost felt like she was there again, except, of course, then it'd be Dean doing the cooking.

She shook her head. The boys had interrupted enough last night. No reason to let them interrupt this morning when they weren't even here. She was about to go into the living room to grab her phone, though, when Lisa came over with two plates filled with bacon, eggs, and English muffins.

"Wow, that looks awesome." Charlie took the jelly Lisa passed her and smeared it on her English muffins. Then she broke up the bacon and layered it onto the muffins with the eggs.

Lisa looked over at her from across the breakfast bar and laughed.

"What?" Charlie asked. "Hey, McDonald's got nothing on home cooking."

She winked and took a bite. It really was a Hobbit-worthy breakfast.

Lisa, on the other hand, was just digging into hers with her fork, and for some reason, that struck Charlie as completely adorable.

For a moment, she let herself imagine this was every Saturday morning. She could wake up in a normal house, have breakfast with her normal girlfriend, and then spend the rest of the day doing whatever. Hell, even grocery shopping with Lisa sounded like fun, and Charlie hated grocery shopping.

She closed her eyes and reminded herself she couldn't stay. Not with Lisa, not in this town. Not anywhere. Hell, it was probably her fault Rowena had gone after Lisa in the first place. What else would she be doing here?

"Hey, you okay?" Lisa asked. She rested a hand on Charlie's elbow.

Charlie looked up at her. "Just wishing I was gonna be around more than a couple of days."

Something flitted through Lisa's eyes at that and, oh no, she'd better not be thinking the same thing. Brigid would kill Charlie for it, and she'd be right to. This was only ever supposed to be a fling. A night, maybe a weekend. That was all hunters ever got to have. 

Sam had tried for a year with that vet, and he'd kind of suggested Dean had tried the whole normal life thing too at some point. It didn't work. It couldn't work, because even if Charlie got out of the life, that didn't mean the life wouldn't come after her. She'd had her quest but, like Frodo, that didn't mean life got back to normal. It meant normal was out the window.

Charlie set down her half-eaten sandwich, appetite not really there anymore. "I should check and see if my friends found anything."

She hopped down from the stool and fled into the living room. Her phone was still on the end table next to her empty wine glass. Miraculously enough, it still had power, and it showed she had a ton of messages, all of which turned out to be from Sam. She scrolled up to where she'd sent Lisa's picture from her contact.

[Call me as soon as you can.]  
[Look, I'm coming up there. Should make it by mid-morning.]

Just him? That was weird.

[If you haven't seen the news yet, Dean's face is all over it. Well, a police sketch of him.]

Wait, what?

"Hey, did you meet with that police sketch artist yesterday?" she called out.

"Yeah. It was a waste of time, though. It didn't really look like the guy." Lisa came into the living room just as Charlie turned on the television.

"What's the news station?"

"Three."

Charlie punched in the number. They were finishing up a weather report.

"Why, what's going on?"

"My friends... think they might have a match for the sketch," Charlie said. That was true enough. "Just, kind of an unexpected one. So I'm hoping they'll show it."

The station went to commercial.

"Why do I get the feeling there's more to that?" Lisa crossed her arms over her chest.

"I can't really say more than that until I know more," Charlie said. "Some might be wrong, some wouldn't make sense, some I probably shouldn't say."

"So, these aren't just friends, then. Do you work with them?"

"Sometimes? Sort of on a case-by-case basis." She scrambled for something true but not obviously monster-y. Ooh! "Remember Roman Enterprises?"

"Ye-ah, sort of. Didn't that whole business break up after some kind of scandal?"

"Exactly." Charlie took a breath. "I may have had something to do with that. It was the first case where I met these guys."

Lisa's eyes widened. "Wow. Just... wow."

A faint ping of déjà vu ran through Charlie, but she shook it off. The news was back, but now they were talking about sports. She looked back at her messages.

[Charlie, it's not Rowena.]  
[And how are you dating Lisa?]  
[Dean's Lisa.]

The penny dropped. Lisa looked nothing like the illustration from the books, but then neither did the boys. Besides, it would have been almost a decade since _The Kids Are Alright_. Seven since _Swan Song_ , but that had been text-only since it was released unpublished.

"Lisa," she started hesitantly, "do you remember all those natural disasters a few years ago? Earthquakes, tornadoes, kinda seemed like the world was gonna end for a little while there?"

"Of course. What does any of that have to do with anything?"

"Were you living here back then?"

"No. Indiana." Lisa hugged her arms closer. "It was the year after that we moved here."

Of course it was. 

"Just you and your son?"

Lisa nodded tightly. Charlie had a feeling there was something more there, but that Lisa wouldn’t appreciate any further digging.

The newscaster's voice changed from the sports reporter to the anchor again. 

"And in closing, the police are still searching for the unnamed assailant who attempted to abduct a local citizen. If you see this man, please call the number at the bottom of your screen. The suspect is assumed to be armed and dangerous, and should not be approached."

Charlie stared at the sketch. It was Dean all right. But if it wasn't Rowena that she’d seen, how had whoever (or whatever) looked like Dean to Lisa and like Rowena to Charlie?

"Do you know that guy?" Lisa asked. "I thought you said you didn't see him."

"Not that night I didn't." Charlie looked at Lisa, who clearly didn't recognize Dean, and then back to the tv. "And yeah, I do. And none of this makes any sense."

~*~

There was plenty to do when Lisa got back home after dropping Charlie at her motel. She'd been tempted to invite her to just grab her computer and come back to do whatever she needed to do at the house, but she'd bit down on the impulse. Having this morning cut short sucked enough without throwing in a potential rejection, and she had a feeling Charlie was going to say she needed to be alone to work.

As it was, it was basically just a case of having to get back to work earlier than Lisa would have liked. Her visions of a weekend in which they didn't leave the house at all fizzled into smoke before her eyes as Charlie promised to call, but with an expression that suggested either that might never happen or Lisa wouldn't like what she had to say.

Lisa wondered briefly whether that contact snapshot was some kind of trophy. She shoved that thought aside, though, because if that were the case, what would she call the one she'd taken of Charlie? Delusional hope? Memorabilia? 

Sure, it stung to scrape the half-eaten breakfast sandwich into the trash, but she couldn't help but smile as she added the empty wineglasses to the dishwasher. She hadn't had that much fun just watching a movie in ages, even if they hadn't made it halfway through. The look on Charlie's face when she'd seen that it was the original, unretouched movie had been priceless. Lisa didn't even remember when she'd acquired the videocassette, but she was grateful to her younger self for getting it.

Changing the sheets was bittersweet, but just the touch of them brought back some of the previous night's highlights. She smiled fondly at the thought of that absurd tattoo on Charlie's hip. It suited her perfectly, though. She could totally see Charlie as a Dungeons and Dragons type, and the Leia thing had been obvious within the first minutes of the movie. If they ever did get a second date, Lisa thought she'd suggest Return of the Jedi this time because, well. Because.

It was going to be a letdown tonight, getting between regular old sheets, but maybe now that she'd actually let herself have a date, maybe it wouldn't be the last time the silk ones got a chance. Still, she chose the ones with the highest thread count in the linen closet. Not that any of her sheets were scratchy, but it felt like a good idea to stay just this side of decadent for now.

Lisa went through the motions of the rest of her Saturday morning chores, back to the regular weekend routine now that all evidence of last night was cleared away. The house felt particularly empty, which was odd because it wasn't like Ben would normally be here. Most of the time, he'd already be at his job. Maybe it was the fact that she knew he was all the way in Ann Arbor. That could be part of it, but she knew it wasn't all of it.

She was being silly. There had never been any illusions here. Well, maybe there had, but there'd been no basis for them. Charlie had been clear from the start that she wasn't in town indefinitely. So, while Lisa may have been hoping to have the weekend, she couldn't actually have expected it. Sure, it would've been fun to ride along and suggest places Charlie could take pictures for her gaming company job, but could she really complain if she had to do whatever she did to help the FBI find that jerk that had tried to grab her? Especially if it was the same guy who was responsible for the rest of the disappearances?

No, no she couldn't. Even thinking about that night made her shudder. She wanted that guy off the streets before he could harm anyone else. The television was still on, she noticed. Odd, since she wasn't usually the type to just leave it on for background noise, but apparently it had been on since Charlie turned it on. They were flashing the sketch again. This time it looked even less like the guy Lisa remembered, and that caused its own shudder. 

That sketch wasn't going to help anything. Her memory sucked. It always had, or at least it had since the incident. Dana was forever telling her that she was exaggerating, that normal people forgot things like where they put their keys all the time and that she should just get over it, but she couldn't. This was just more proof. The face of the guy who tried to kidnap you should be seared into your memory forever, right? But it had felt fuzzy just the morning after, and now it was obviously even fuzzier. That couldn't be normal. But she wasn't about to tell Dana about that, because she hadn't told her about the attempted kidnapping. She wasn't sure why, exactly. Not telling Ben made sense. He worried about her too much for a kid as it was. And sure, her sister would worry too, but normally Lisa told her everything.

Well, maybe not quite everything. Sure, she'd tell her about her date last night, but she wasn't getting details. Dana would have to be happy with just knowing Lisa had actually had a date for the first time in forever. The memory of pressing Charlie against the wall before they'd even made it up the stairs, of Charlie taking over and taking her apart piece by piece, of Lisa returning the favor during round two, all of that was Lisa's and Lisa's alone. She grabbed her journal and settled in on the couch to cement it in writing before her brain could fuzz that out too.

The entry grew quickly, dwarfing the usual dry commentary about things her students said or did and pride for Ben's latest accomplishment. The pen danced across the page as she tried to capture the quirk of Charlie's smile and the taste of her lips, the curve of her breasts and the absurd perfection of the tattoo. As she reached the point she couldn't find anything left to say, she let herself admit what she'd hoped.

_I wish this could've been a first date rather than a (probably) only date. They say you never forget your first, and despite everything, I haven't. I hope you also don't forget your first in a long while, either._

~*~

Back at her motel room, Charlie furiously hacked into the FBI database. She'd cleaned out all the old stuff on the Winchesters, but there was always a chance someone would match up a hard copy of something against this current sketch. It was tricky, because there were basically a gazillion electronic copies of the thing now, but if she could just map out the key facial recognition landmarks and shift them just enough, maybe there'd be a better chance of keeping Dean safe.

It was ironic, and not in the rainy wedding day kind of way. Once again, here she was, in a shabby motel, feverishly hacking away to save Dean. 

"Meanwhile, I just broke the bro code," she muttered. "Except it's a little hard to avoid getting with your friend’s ex when I don't know who she is and she, clearly, has no idea who you are, so what the hell?"

Someone knocked at the door, and she jumped. Which was stupid. Monsters didn't knock, not even human ones.

"Charlie? It's Sam."

She felt her heart start up again as she got up to let him in. He was already suited up as Agent McRockStar, even though it was weird to see some ancient Buick behind him. (Not surprising, because duh, of course he didn't have the Impala, and it wasn't like there weren't plenty of other cars in that garage in the Bunker, but still. Weird.) As she waved him inside, she said, "In my defense, it's a little hard to avoid all the women Dean's slept with."

"Yeah." Sam let out a little laugh as he set down a backpack and straightened to look her over. "Are you okay? You look kind of pale."

"Oh, just a little post-resurrection traumatic flashback." Charlie shrugged. "Nothing to worry about."

"Nothing to... right." He turned and sat down in the chair by the window. "So, have you found anything?"

"Honestly, I've mostly been just trying to scrub the markers on the sketch so nobody matches it to Dean." Charlie went back to her seat by the desk. It crossed her mind that if these big guys were going to keep sitting in that stupid chair by the window, she should probably switch it with this one. "Especially, you know, the real FBI?"

"You can do that? Wait, don't answer that. Of course you can."

"While I appreciate your faith in me, Sam, there's only so much I can do. But, I figure, if I can create enough variations and get them circulating with the actual sketch, at least it should confuse any facial recognition software. Can't do much about the brains of everyone who saw it, though."

"Yeah. Did, uh, did Lisa recognize him?"

"No, and what the hell is that about?" Charlie demanded. "Because if this is the same Lisa..."

"It is."

"... then didn't Dean go to her after you, you know, jumped into the Cage?" Charlie shuddered. 

"Yeah. And he lived with her and Ben for like a year, until some djinn came after him and killed their neighbors. That's when they moved to Michigan. Not here though."

"And Lisa remembers none of this because... ?"

"Some stuff went down, and Dean felt that she and Ben would be safer if he was completely out of their lives. So he, uh, asked Cas to Windex their memories."

Charlie felt her jaw drop, then snapped it shut. "And he did it? Just because Dean asked?"

"Well, he felt kind of guilty too, I think," Sam said. He squirmed in the rickety chair. "But, in case you haven't noticed, he generally does whatever Dean asks him to."

Yeah, she had noticed. A person didn't need gaydar to see what was going on with those two, even if they were being complete idiots about it. Was that part of why Cas had been willing to wipe her memory? She felt guilty just thinking that. Angels didn't get jealous, did they? Then again, they didn't go around falling for humans, generally, either. Didn't matter right now anyway.

"And you're sure it's not Rowena?"

"She's on the run from Lucifer, so she's lying low, or so she says." Sam shrugged. "From what I saw the last time, that sounds about right though. I don't think she'd risk being seen."

"It still could've been a glamor, though," Charlie said. "I mean, that'd be her go-to play, wouldn't it?"

"Probably. But why would she project an image of Dean? And why would you be able to see through it?"

"Why would Lisa see Dean and I see Rowena?" Charlie countered. "Is there anything other than an illusion spell that could do that?"

"Not that I've ever heard of, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything."

Of course it didn't. 

"So what's our play, then?" she asked. "Because I can run searches all day, but the really good info is probably back at the bunker."

"Right," Sam said. He picked up the backpack and unzipped it. "So that is why I grabbed a couple of the books that seemed most likely to have what we need."

Charlie caught the leather-bound volume he tossed her. The title was embossed into the cover.

" _The Complete Guide to Shapeshifters, Volume One_." Charlie looked back at Sam. "Seriously?"

"The Men of Letters were... are pretty systematic with their information."

"So, wait, do these British Men of Letters maybe have this all digitized?"

"Probably, but I wouldn't recommend trying to hack them. You're as likely to run into a hex as a firewall."

"Damn."

"Yeah."

"You find this out the hard way?"

"Maybe. Possibly.” Sam’s eyes darted to her left, then the floor. He actually looked a little queasy. Sam looked back at her, but just so he could glare, then got super-interested in whatever else he had in that backpack. “Shut up." 

Charlie fought down the urge to laugh. It really wasn't funny, except to the extent that the entire situation was ludicrous.

"So that's my next challenge: learn how to hack magically warded servers. How is this my life?" She shook her head. "Meanwhile, what are you working on, volume two?"

"No, that one's waiting for you. I've got _Illusion Spells and Counterspells_." He waved a much thicker book that she was glad he hadn't thrown to her.

She noticed he hadn't brought anything to do with resurrection spells and decided to leave that be for now. With any luck, solving this case would solve that one. (Whether that would be good luck or bad luck, she didn’t really want to guess.)

"You seriously convinced Dean to stay behind?" she asked.

"No, of course not. He's off helping Cas find Kelly. The one carrying Lucifer's baby."

"I repeat: how is this my life?"

"I ask myself that at least twice a day," Sam answered with a shrug. "It just is."

There wasn't much else to say to that, so Charlie checked on the virus she'd been building to alter the electronic versions of that police sketch. It was as complete as it was ever going to be, so she turned it loose on the FBI file and then sent it out into the wilds of the internet before powering down her laptop and opening the book.

"Chapter one," she muttered, "basic shapeshifter morphology."

This was going to be a long day. A very, very long day.

~*~

Right after lunch, Lisa settled down at her computer with a cup of tea. Ben had said he'd Skype her during the break at one. She didn't think he really would. There would be too many interesting things going on. But it would be good to see how well this would work out for keeping in touch once he was living there.

That was such a strange thought. Ben, living somewhere other than at home. He was going to be eighteen in just a few months, though. These days, that was no guarantee he'd be able to live on his own right away, but at least he would get the relative independence of dorm life while he got his engineering degree. It was the way it should be, but Lisa couldn't help the twinge of loneliness at the thought of this house being this empty every weekend. Every day.

This was really not the frame of mind she needed to be in. Besides, she'd proved she wasn't completely done with dating, right? They'd had fun during dinner and the movie. Well, as much of it as they'd watched. And then after. Maybe Charlie wasn't the one who'd stay, but someone would be. She ignored the twinge in her gut at that thought.

The computer chimed. Lisa clicked on the icon.

"Hi, Mom." Ben grinned at her.

"Ben! Hi. How's it going?" she asked.

"It's awesome here! We had mock classes this morning, even one in the physics lab."

"That's great!" 

Behind Ben, a young woman crowded into the screen.

"Who’s your friend?"

"Oh, right. Mom, this is Alex. Alex, this is my mom."

"Nice to meet you Mrs. Braeden."

Lisa had learned over the years not to bother correcting Ben's friends.

"Nice to meet you. Are you planning on majoring in engineering too?"

“Actually, I’m already taking nursing at the community college back home,” Alex said, “but I’m looking at the transfer program here to get a bachelors.”

"They had us draw names to put is in groups of four," Ben explained. "Tim and Jean are sharing Jean's computer, to make their calls. I told Alex she could use mine when I'm done."

Lisa shook her head. It hadn't been anything like that when she'd visited universities before applying. But then, they hadn't had weekends like this, either.

"So, what's scheduled for this afternoon?"

"Touring the dorms, then the sports center," Ben said. 

"We're going to watch the diving team practice," Alex said. "I still think we should've picked the library.”

"Can you visit the library after the diving team?" Lisa asked. "I mean, you've got a point. Gotta know whether it's someplace you can see yourself studying."

Ben just barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes, and Lisa had to bite her lip not to laugh. Seriously? She could barely keep him out of the library here! Was he trying to look cool for this girl he'd just met? Because, call her crazy, but Lisa was pretty sure the way to do that probably wasn't to have her sit in on a conversation with your mom while you gushed about having a fake class in a physics lab. Lisa fixed him with a look until he caved.

"Yeah, we can do that. They've got to be open after dinner, right?"

"I would hope so," Lisa said.

Ben looked over his shoulder. "We just about have time for Alex to call her mom, so I gotta go."

Lisa smiled. "Yeah you do. Have a good rest of your day, and don't forget to check in before you hit the road tomorrow."

"I will."

"Nice to meet you, Alex," Lisa added.

She and Ben waved in response, Ben's hand growing large as he reached in to tap the button ending the call.

Ben was clearly having an awesome time planning his future. Maybe it was time Lisa did some more of that too, she thought, as she opened a browser window and ran a search on local business-zoned properties. She might not be ready to open her own studio yet, but if she was ever going to be, she’d better get the lay of the land.

~*~

"So, we've got common shapeshifters, the alpha shapeshifter, first-generation shapeshifters, and you know the one thing they all have in common?" Charlie asked.

"They only take one shape at a time?" Sam asked. He covered a yawn with his hand.

"They only take one shape at a time." Charlie slammed her book shut. "Did you even sleep?"

"I took a nap around three." He yawned again.

"So, twelve hours ago. Kinda think you're due for another."

"Probably." 

"Go ahead, then." Charlie nodded towards the bed. 

"And you're well rested?"

"Pretty sure I got more sleep than you."

Sam shook his head and closed his book. "You win."

It didn't even take him a full step to cross the distance between the window chair and the bed. Then all he bothered to do was take his suit jacket and shoes off before collapsing. He was out in minutes.

Meanwhile, Charlie grabbed the next volume on shapeshifters out of his backpack. It didn't look much more promising than the last book, but she might as well give it a shot.

Thing was, she was pretty sure they were barking up the wrong pulpified trees. They were looking at things they already knew could change a person's perception: spells and shapeshifters. Maybe there was a slightly better chance of success with the spells, but shapeshifters were almost certainly a dead end. What they really needed was some way of searching on "things that can look like more than one thing at a time." Well, they could search that, of course. She already had. The regular internet had nothing. Ditto for the dark web.

"One of these days I need to scan that entire library and digitize it," she muttered.

For now, Charlie set up a table to organize the most likely suspects. Everyone who could look one way face-to-face and another in a mirror or camera went in one column: changelings, shapeshifters, sirens, and wraiths. Everyone who could tailor their appearance to their victim went into another: changelings, quareens, shapeshifters (sort of), and sirens. That narrowed down exactly nothing.

Changelings were kids, though there was probably one that looked like an adult, which fed into the whole "going after the caretakers" m.o. (Seriously, how had she not thought of these guys? What, was she repressing everything she'd read about them because then she'd have realized who Lisa was? And here she was, back to "things Charlie would rather not look at too closely right now, thank you very much.")

Once she’d organized them to her satisfaction, Qareen stood out as the likeliest suspect, or something like them. A cross between that and a changeling, maybe? That would keep the whole "going after people who care for children" thing in the mix. And maybe this thing also honed in on something else? After all, there were djinn who kept you in your happiest dream and djinn who went for your worst nightmare, depending on what flavor they wanted your blood to be. She knew she was reaching, but she really, really would rather this thing turned out to be more of a Gaknar and less of a qareen, not just because of being able to step on the thing to squish it but also because it went after fears rather than desires and, as a bonus, was just a thematically appropriate monster from a tv show and so not a real threat to anyone.

Seriously, Charlie was going to need a Buffy marathon sometime soon, once this was all dealt with. A memory of Lisa's DVD collection flitted through her mind, because, yeah, she had all seven seasons, plus all five seasons of Angel right alongside her growing Marvel collection. Maybe those were Ben's, but somehow, Charlie didn't think so. Not with the way Lisa had geeked out over _A New Hope_ , the un-douche-ified version.

And this was totally not even a little like what she was supposed to be thinking about right now.

Sam stirred and snorted. Charlie looked over at him and was not all that surprised to see him levering himself up off the bed.

"Dude, that was, what, an hour and a half?" she asked.

He scrubbed at his eyes and looked at the clock. "Uh, no? More like three and a half."

Charlie looked at the clock on her screen. "Oh. Yeah, I guess so."

"Find anything good?" He came to stand beside her and peered at her computer. "Lemme try that again: what've you got?"

She explained how she'd grouped the monsters she'd found and her best guess as to what they were dealing with.

"Huh." Sam ran his fingers through his hair. "So, the last time we dealt with a qareen it was a 'return to love' spell gone wrong. I suppose it could be something like that again... "

"But then why would it look like Dean to Lisa?"

"We don't know how it figures out what a person's 'deepest, darkest desire' is. They might not need to be consciously aware of it."

"And why would it look like Rowena to me? Because I'm pretty damned sure I'm not secretly lusting after that bitch."

Sam opened and closed his mouth a couple of times.

"What? Spit it out already, Chewie."

"Seriously?" Sam rolled his eyes. "Just, it's not my story to tell, but what the last one appeared to Dean as, he swore pretty much the same thing."

"Okay, but I've been out of the closet for, like, ever. Not really the same thing."

"Wait, what? No, it... never mind. Like I said, not my story to tell." Sam huffed. "But Cas did say Rowena really got under your skin. So maybe this whatever-it-is isn't trying to tempt you with something you want."

Now that was an interesting idea. But what exactly did Rowena make her feel? Loathing? No, not really. Annoyance? Too petty.

_Let me tell you about you… a difficult and lonely childhood. Tragedy, absent parents. Always outside the mainstream. Sexually progressive. Living in your own head for solace and direction._

That was true as far as it went, weird as it had been to hear it put like that.

_I read you the minute I saw you. And I'm sure you're learning that the line between good and evil is quite flexible._

The image of Russell Wellington begging for his life flashed through Charlie's mind. Then her knife in his chest. Charlie cringed.

"What?" Sam asked.

She couldn't answer right away.

"Charlie? You okay?"

Her skin crawled like a million ants were trying to escape from her body along with whatever was left of her lunch. 

"Shame," she finally said. "If it's going for the emotion she brings out in me, that's it."

Sam's brow creased. "Maybe. Still begs the question why Dean for someone who doesn't remember him."

"Horror, then? Like not just fear, but... yeah. Horror." Charlie shuddered. "If whatever happened was that bad..."

"It was."

"... then maybe some part of her still associates Dean with that? Like, if not her mind, then maybe her soul? Could that happen?"

"Best person to ask would be Cas."

"But he's with Dean who, let me guess, isn't taking any of this well."

"Got it in one."

Charlie rested her chin in her hand and glanced back at her computer. "That's assuming we're even kind of on the right track."

"It's the best theory we've had so far."

"Doesn't mean it's right."

"Doesn't mean it's not."

"What about all the ones that look different through a mirror or a camera? They're the only ones that seem to have the ability to look like two different things at the same time." She almost brought up the siren business, then decided that wasn't going to help anything.

"True, but they don't tailor both their appearances. One's their true form."

"So, what then? Keep blowtorches and silver blades handy while we search for the thing's heart?"

"Don't forget a bronze dagger with the blood of someone it's infected."

Charlie looked back at her impromptu database and found the entry with that for the kill. "You really think it's something in the siren family? Neither of us exchanged any bodily fluids with it."

"You sure? Neither of you got even a little nick of cut?"

Charlie felt like the air had just been punched out of her. "It cut Lisa somehow."

"Did you see it?"

"I didn't see it happen, but I bandaged it up." Oh, she so did not like where her brain was going with this. "You don't think..."

"A siren would have no reason to seduce someone to sleep with you," Sam said. "They seduce people to sleep with them."

"I hope you're right, because if not... ew." She didn't think anything about last night seemed like it wasn't real, but who knew? She really, really didn't like the idea of Lisa being forced into, well, anything really.

She was so screwed. She needed to get the hell out of this town as soon as they got this case sewn up. 

"So, yeah," Sam said. "Be prepared for everything, and we probably still won't have what we need for this specific monster. That's kind of the way this thing tends to go."

"Yeah, I've noticed." Charlie shook her head. "Do you even have your usual arsenal with you?"

"Mostly. Everything but the grenade launcher, really."

"Everything but the... really? No, wait, don't answer that. I shouldn't be even a little bit surprised that you have a grenade launcher."

"Technically Dean does, since it's in the Impala."

Now it was Charlie's turn to roll her eyes. "He's just waiting for an excuse to use that, isn't he?"

"Have you met Dean? I'm surprised he hasn't used it on some random vampire just on principle."

Charlie laughed. "Yeah, that sounds like him. I guess that's good to have for stuff that nothing else works on."

"Wood chipper works on most things, too."

"Of course it does. And you found this out how?"

"Bobby."

Charlie winced. "Sorry. I wish I'd met him."

"You'd have liked him." Sam gave her a sad smile. "And he'd definitely have liked you."

"So what kind of clues are we looking for, if we think we need to find this thing's heart?"

"We'd have to start with some idea who's controlling it. Have you talked to any of the survivors' families?"

"Not so much. I mean, I did scope out the neighborhoods, but I kind of blew my chance to pass myself off as FBI early on. Besides, I picked up the suit but I haven't had the chance or the supplies to make any i.d. yet. They don't exactly have a Kinko's here."

Something she should've thought to fix while she was in Kalamazoo. But she'd been distracted, plus she hadn't had all the information then she did now. And the yo-yo trip from monster to Rowena to monster hadn't helped.

"When did not being FBI ever stop you from asking questions?"

"First you need someone to ask," she pointed out. She explained how their neighborhoods were all basically ghost towns, then filled him in on her total lack of useful info from Western Michigan University. "And there's nothing helpful in their police reports. Or there wasn't."

"Got them handy? Maybe a second set of eyes would make the difference."

"Knock yourself out." She stood up and waved him towards the computer with a yawn. "They’ve got their own folder. My turn for a nap."

~*~

"So you did go on a date."

Lisa could hear her sister's smug smile through the phone.

"Okay, okay. Yes, I had a date."

"So?"

"She was... pretty great." Lisa smiled. "I mean, she's cute, she's quirky, she's as much of a goof for Star Wars as I am."

"Holy shit, this wasn't just a date."

"What? No. Of course it was. She's not even going to be in town much longer."

"Okay, but then why are you all 'cute, quirky, geeky' and not 'hot, gorgeous, amazing in bed'?"

"I didn't say she wasn't any of those things." Lisa felt color warming her cheeks.

"But that's not where you started. Oh, Lisa."

"Dana, come on. I'm a big girl. I can manage a one-nighter without getting my heart broken."

"I hope you're right." Lisa could hear her sigh. "So, amazing?"

"Shut up."

"No, but really. It's been awhile since anyone, and even longer since another woman."

"And you're still not getting the gory details. Ev-er." Lisa laughed.

"Fine. Fine. What else do you have planned for your weekend of freedom?"

Well, that she didn't have a great answer for. She'd been hoping that she'd get to have at least one more day with Charlie, but then there was that whole business with the police sketch, and she hadn't heard from her since.

"Not much different than the usual," she finally said. "Still gotta take care of the house and stuff."

"If you're going to get yourself back out there, you should just, I don't know, get out there," Dana said. "The night's still young. Maybe head out for a drink or something."

"Okay, not actually looking to relive my twenties," Lisa said. "And I'm so not going to a bar by myself."

"Since when?"

Since some random dude tried to grab me. Except she wasn't about to say that, because then that would mean explaining everything that had been going on. Dana worried enough without that.

"And you still don't have any friends to just call up to go out for a drink?"

Lisa sighed.

~*~

The click of the motel door woke Charlie up. Her eyes snapped open and the headlights from Sam's Buick briefly flooded the room.

"Shit." 

Once he pulled away and the room was dark again, she turned on the bedside light and saw the note.

_Checking out the gossip._

So, bar. Great idea. She splashed water on her face and checked her outfit. She'd showered and changed after she got back from Lisa's, and she wasn't too wrinkled. She was also running out of clothes. Ugh.

Grabbing her phone, she shot him a quick text asking which bar he'd picked. She wasn't sure this town had more than one, but even little towns usually had the nice bar on one end of town and the not-so-nice one on the other. So, once he gave her the name of the one he'd picked (the dive, of course), she did a quick search and found the name of the nice one.

When she walked in, Charlie noticed that this wasn't just the "nice bar." The rainbow Bud taps didn't show up in your average every day bar. So, this should be interesting. She really hadn't expected to find a gay bar here, though she knew better than to assume even the reddest state wouldn't have plenty of them. She wasn't, fortunately, the only woman in the room, though her 'dar suggested she might be the only one who wasn't straight.

"Harvey Wallbanger," she said once she got the bartender's attention. That got her a raised eyebrow. Hey, it was a classic for a reason. Behind the bar, the tv was running with no sound but captions so anyone who actually wanted to watch it could figure out what was going on despite the jukebox. Which was cool, but who wanted to watch a rerun of… What even was that? An Olsen twins movie? She paid for her drink and took a sip. 

Looking around the room, she saw the crowd was a bit more of a blend than she'd realized at first. The bridesmaid group actually had two wearing bride crowns, for starters, which would explain why the guys didn't look annoyed. She felt her own instinctive reaction fade a bit at the realization that she wasn't as alone as she'd thought.

_Neither is Lisa._

Why was she thinking about Lisa? She needed to stay far, far away from her. It might have been Charlie's presence that had attracted the maybe-qareen to her. Must have been, because she didn't fit the profile. History teacher, pediatric nurse, soccer coach, guidance counselor. Yoga teacher was not the way to finish out that sequence, unless she'd misread what they all had in common.

"You're new around here."

Charlie turned to find a curly-haired guy just about Dean's height looking down at her curiously. 

"Just passing through," she replied, swirling the ice cubes in her drink.

"Uh huh." The bartender brought him something extremely purple. "What, you've never seen a grape soda?"

"Not with that much Chamborde." 

The guy just shrugged and took a long sip. "You part of the party?"

"Me? No. Not too many chicks come in here usually, I take it?"

The guy snorted. "Yeah, no."

Well, this was going nowhere. Time to change it up a bit.

"Not my usual scene either," she said. "Not a whole lot of options in town, though."

"You got that right. So, what brings you to our little non-metropolis?"

"Photo assignment," she said, deciding it was safest to stick with the one story. "Didn't expect to stumble into a mystery while I was here though."

"The disappearances? Yeah, that is so not something that usually happens around here." He took another swig of his drink. "You a photo journalist then?"

"No, I work for a gaming company. But you know us gamers. All about the patterns and solving the puzzles."

He gave a bit of a sideways nod in acknowledgment.

"And I'm just not seeing the pattern here," she continued. "I mean, the newspaper said there wasn't really anything to connect them."

"You mean besides all being from here?"

"Well, yeah." Charlie shrugged. "Why, you think it's something to do with the town?"

"That's as good a guess as any," he said. "Maybe they just all wanted out of here."

Charlie couldn't quite see that. Sure, there wasn't a whole lot of town in this town, but it was pretty enough. It had Gus' and this place, both of which were counting in its favor. She supposed people must want to leave, but there was no reason for a string of people to just up and go missing. Plus, she had firsthand knowledge that someone—something—was trying to grab people.

She looked out at the crowd on the dance floor. There had to be some connection between the victims. If it were random, then the monster would probably stake out a particular place, like, oh say, outside a bar where people were bound to be a bit out of it and easier to grab. There was always some common thread. Nothing was ever truly random.

Kind of like washing up on the shores of Lake Michigan and finding her way to this specific town. No way that was random either. And meeting Lisa, Dean's ex? That practically felt like fate. Charlie wondered how she was doing. Was she going stir crazy with Ben away for the weekend? Shit, was she safe home alone? The talisman Charlie had slipped into her yoga bag was specifically to prevent locating her (or at least the bag) by magical means. But obviously if it wasn't Rowena or some other witch, then that talisman wouldn't be much protection at all.

Charlie pulled out her phone and thumbed past the lock screen. No new texts. She hesitated briefly, then tapped out a quick message and hit send before she could start overthinking.

"Drunk-texting the ex? Generally people have more than two sips of their drink before starting that nonsense."

"Not drunk, and not my ex," Charlie retorted.

"Wife, then?" 

"Nosy much? What's your entire life story and relationship status, then?"

The dude held up both hands in mock surrender. "Just making conversation."

 _Then say something useful!_ she thought furiously.

Fortunately, the guy just wandered off after that. He'd seemed friendly at first, but now he had definitely gone full-on creep. Charlie shuddered and took a swig of her drink.

This place seemed to be a bust. Maybe she should go check on Lisa. Maybe she should at least wait for her to text back. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Finally, her phone chimed.

[Hi! Wasn't sure I'd be hearing from you.]

_Yeah, neither was I._

[Sorry. Got kind of busy after you dropped me off.]

[Any luck?]

[Not so far. Unless you count finding and ruling out loads of dead ends, in which case, yay!]

She could just about picture Lisa's cute little laugh at that.

[So, what are you up to this evening if you haven't got any leads?]

[That is a very, very good question.]

Fishing for leads was one thing, but this was the opposite of fish in a barrel. More like fish scattered throughout the ocean and deeper. 

[We could finish watching the movie.]

And there it was. An offer she really should but probably couldn't refuse.

_There's nothing to say that it's definitely to do with me._

[Sure.]

Charlie tossed back the rest of her drink and headed out to her car, hoping she could remember how to get to Lisa's house.

~*~

Saturday night on a university campus was supposed to be all about the parties. And, okay, this was sort of a party. It just also kind of sucked. 

Tim and Alex were dancing to whatever-the-hell sappy stuff was playing on the overhead in the room that wasn't a high school gym but was apparently the university equivalent. They looked like they were having fun, anyway. Jean had been playing one of the card games the residential assistants had set up, but neither she nor her partner was very good at it. Ben just kind of wanted to get back to his room and just forget this part of the day even happened. 

Okay, watching the swim team had been less fun than actually jumping in and swimming with them, but it sure hadn't been boring. And yeah, they'd checked out the library like Mom had said. That didn't mean they had actual homework to be doing in the meantime, though, so that had been kind of boring. Yeah, sure, at least they knew where to find it and a basic idea of how to use the reference section. That was pretty standard at most colleges and universities, though. There hadn't been anything special to make this university stand out.

Well, other than the fact it was in-state and had an awesome engineering program. But this weekend was about selling “the whole experience.” They didn't say it quite like that, but Ben knew what was up. Anyone who was on the fence, they were hoping to suck in with promises of what life would be like on campus. He could see that, he guessed, at least for the ones who weren't worried about the effect it would have on their parents.

He and Alex had talked about it earlier. She was concerned about her foster mom supporting her while she was in school. Ben didn't know much about the foster system, but he knew enough to know that was unusual. Clearly Alex's mom wasn't one of those foster parents just in it for the money. 

"I could go to nursing school anywhere, you know?" she'd said. "SDSU has a good program right in Sioux Falls, and then it'd only be tuition, no room and board. She wants me to consider all my options, though. Thinks I should broaden my horizons or something."

"I know what you mean," he'd agreed. "Not quite so easy for engineering. WMU does have a couple of programs, and sometimes I think I should just apply there and live at home, but they don't have the kind I want to do."

"There's different kinds of engineering?"

That had gotten them into a deep discussion of mechanical engineering versus electrical or civic engineering, which led to Alex talking about how she was glad she didn't have to decide from the get-go whether she was more interested in working in the operating room or a children's hospital. Alex was cool. She didn't make fun of Ben for wanting to take stuff apart and figure out how it worked.

"It's kinda the same thing," she'd said. "Just, I'm more interested in fixing people and you're more interested in fixing the stuff they use."

"Or making new kinds of stuff," he said. "Like, maybe I'll invent a better wheelchair."

"Exactly!"

He kind of hoped that Alex did decide to come here. They probably wouldn't have any classes together, but they could still be friends, right? That was kind of the point to the random groups the RA's had set up: keep them from staying "stuck in their silos," a phrase Ben was pretty sure he hadn't heard the last of.

Just in case they didn't both end up here, though, they'd friended each other on Facebook. She didn't post much on account of her foster-mother (who was a sheriff, which sounded both cool and like a huge pain in the ass) being paranoid about internet creeps, but she said she used the messenger more.

Ben shook his soda can. Yeah, it was done.

"I'm going back to my room," he told Alex and Tim when they came back from their dance. "Kinda tired, you know?"

"Seriously, dude?" Tim asked. "This party's just warming up!"

Ben looked around the room. There were little clusters of kids all around doing different things. Some were activities the RA's had cooked up, others were just whatever. One group seemed to be playing a video game together on their phones. Some were just talking.

"Come on," Jean said. "Next hand we'll deal the rest of you in."

"What are you playing?" Alex asked, looking over the criss-crossed piles of cards.

"We're gonna switch to rummy five hundred," Jean said. "If you don't know how, we can play an open hand till you get the hang of it."

"C'mon, Ben," Tim said. "Don't be that guy."

Ben wasn't sure when "that guy" had become the one who just wanted to go to sleep, but he guessed he could manage a game of rummy.

"Fine," he said. "But if I kick all your asses, you're gonna wish you'd let me go to bed."

"Oh, you think so," Jean said. She snapped the cards into a bridge and shuffled them together briskly. "We'll just see about that, engineer-boy."

Ben shook his head and shifted his seat so they could all squeeze around the table. He knew the odds were that even if some of them came here, it wouldn't be all five. But he could kind of deal with this being his new normal.

~*~

Charlie's phone dinged right as she turned onto Lisa's street. Once she'd pulled into the driveway, she tapped on the text from Sam.

[Dude, where are you? I just got to the other bar and I don't see you.]

Oh, crap.

[You don't want to know.]

[Charlie]

[Sam]

[You sure this is a good idea?]

[Better idea than leaving her in an empty house when whatever-it-is already tried to grab her once this week.]

It took awhile for Sam to reply.

[I've heard that argument before. Can't really disagree with it, but just be careful, ok?]

Shit. Of course Dean would've probably said something similar in the past. This really was weird.

Still. Her life had been eighty-five kinds of weird ever since she took the job at Roman Enterprises a lifetime or two ago. (Wow, that was actually kind of literal. What even was her life? Lives?) What was one more kind of weird?

[I will. You too.]

[You know me.]

[Exactly.]

Charlie pocketed her phone and headed up to the door, where Lisa was already standing.

"Everything okay?" Lisa asked as she waved her in.

"Just had to check in with Sam."

"One of your FBI buddies?" Lisa headed for the living room.

"Yeah."

The tv was already set up and the VCR was humming away. There was a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, flanked by empty glasses.

"So, we still have some wine from last night, or there's apple juice."

"Ooh, I haven't had apple juice in years." _More years than I remember._ "That would be great."

"Coming right up."

Lisa was back with juice for each of them, and then the movie was starting again.

"I'm not exactly sure when we stopped paying attention," Lisa said, "but I rewound a bit from where we stopped it."

"Works for me," Charlie said as she grabbed a fistful of popcorn and settled back onto the couch.

~*~

They didn't get cozy right away. It wasn't like Charlie was hugging her side of the couch or anything, just tonight didn't seem quite the same. Lisa thought it was a little odd. Obviously, Charlie had wanted to come back for a second date, or to finish off the first one perhaps, but she didn't seem to be in any hurry to pick back up where they'd left off.

It wasn't that Lisa just wanted to get right to the sex. It was actually kind of adorable watching how Charlie lit up for certain scenes. Much more entertaining than the movie itself, which was saying something. But Lisa had sort of pictured more hand-holding and snuggling. 

There was, of course, the problem where hand-holding didn't work well with buttery popcorn, so maybe that had been a strategic error.

She kept checking her phone, too. Which, okay, she was probably looking to see if her FBI friend (Steve? Sal?) had found anything, but still. It was like she wasn't all the way here.

Of course, by focusing on that, Lisa was taking the enjoyment out of the moment, so she dragged her attention back to the screen and cheered on Team Millennium Falcon as they took out the TIE fighters that were following them. Interestingly, by the time they got to the rebel base, Lisa and Charlie were sitting much closer. Lisa bit back the urge to just lean into Charlie. If she hadn't noticed and this wasn't deliberate, Lisa didn't want to make things awkward by pushing it.

She wasn't sure what she'd been hoping for when she'd invited Charlie over. She'd been surprised to even hear from her. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised. Their goodbye this morning had definitely felt more like "goodbye" than "see you later." She'd attributed Charlie's change in mood to recognizing that creep on the news earlier. At least someone knew who he was, even if for some reason she believed it didn't make sense. Clearly that hadn't been enough to find the guy, though.

And maybe that's all her distance was now. But something didn't seem to add up. She hadn't wanted the wine, which, okay, whatever. But that plus keeping her distance... was she on duty? Was she not just friends with FBI people but actually one of them? It would probably explain a thing or two if she was an undercover agent, though why would she admit to being friends with agents? Not a great way to keep a cover. 

Still, that would be kind of cool. As Luke made a quip about shooting womp-rats, Lisa imagined what it would be like to date someone who was some kind of secret agent. Would she ever get to know that, or would it be like Mr. & Mrs. Smith? She didn't think she'd like worrying about Charlie's safety all the time. There was a reason she'd never really dated police or fire types. But there was a kind of neat mystique to having someone in her life who did interesting and mysterious things.

_Yeah, it's so neat that it's distracting me from the damn movie. So much for “dwelling in the present moment.”_

She focused back on the screen just in time to watch an X-wing explode, and she jumped. Whoever was flying that had someone waiting for them back home probably. Maybe parents, siblings, maybe a lover, maybe even kids. Or maybe that's why they'd joined the Rebel Alliance in the first place. Maybe their family had already been killed, like Leia's. Like Luke's. No one left. Well, as far as they knew, anyway. Lisa wasn't sure which was sadder, the idea that this person's family would have to learn to live without them or the idea that there was no one to remember them.

"Hey, you okay?" Charlie had paused the movie and was looking at her with concern in her eyes.

"Yeah, sorry." Lisa gave herself a shake and forced a smile. "Mind went off on a tangent."

Charlie continued to look at her for a moment, then smiled back and hit play.

Lisa promised herself she'd stay focused for the rest of the movie.

_I dwell in the present moment. Not to mention the actual world._

She grabbed another fistful of popcorn just in time for the Death Star to blow up.

~*~

Two bars in one night. It was hardly a record, but Sam couldn't remember the last time he'd been to more than one bar in the same night without Dean being the driving force.

He'd managed to get the bartender to gossip a bit about the missing persons cases, but he just rehashed everything Sam already knew. No connection between the victims. No pattern to where or when they'd been grabbed. No one other than the one un-named would-be victim had managed to get away.

Sam supposed he was going to have to interview Lisa. It wouldn't really make sense not to, for all that he was sure Charlie had already gotten all the information she could out of her. If only to keep his cover, he'd have to interview the one eyewitness they had, and who knew, maybe he'd turn up something Charlie had missed. She was brilliant, but she hadn't been hunting for that long.

He waved off yet another drink somebody had tried to buy for him. He'd told the bartender he wasn't going to accept any, but he supposed the guy would get less tips if the men trying to send him drinks thought the bartender was the one blocking them. That was okay. Sam could be bad cop for a change.

Sam had serious concerns about Charlie being at Lisa's tonight. On the one hand, she had a point that Lisa probably shouldn't be left home alone and unguarded. But Charlie and Dean were just so alike, he had a feeling this was going to end badly for both Charlie and Lisa. Either way, it was clearly screwing with Dean's head. He pulled up Dean's latest text.

[Still no Rosemary. What do you mean Charlie went back?]

He'd been weirded out by Ben getting ready for college, too, but that was more of the typical "they grow up so fast" kind of crap. One of his earlier texts had been a lot more... raw.

[Do you think I put her off guys? Even though she doesn't remember me?]

That one had both been easier and more painful to answer.

[Bisexuality is a thing, Dean.]

It would've been nice if that had been a conversation that had ever come up during the year they'd lived together, but considering the mental state Dean had been in, Sam wasn't surprised any heart-to-hearts that actually happened wouldn't have been about Lisa. He wondered if she had picked up on his brother's non-apocalypse-related issues. Or maybe she'd been worried that the big macho hunter couldn't cope with non-heterosexuality. Well, if that was the case, she wasn't wrong, just not for quite the right reason.

After the fiasco with Ramiel, Sam had hoped maybe Dean would have pulled his head out of his ass and told Castiel that he loved him too. Apparently, it took more than near-death experiences (and multiple deaths and resurrections) to dislodge the specter of John Winchester, drill sergeant extraordinaire.

Dean hadn't replied to that text. No surprise, really.

Sam sighed. This evening was a bust. And even with the nap he'd taken earlier, he was beat. Maybe he should just go back to the motel and get some actual sleep. Something between his shoulder blades prickled at that idea. Not a good one then. Too bad. Find Lisa's house and stake it out so she had a guard inside and out? Yeah, that felt right. Creepy, if he thought too much about the fact that she and Charlie were basically on their second date right now, so he just wouldn’t think about that. 

It wasn't like he was going to go peeking in the windows, after all, so he could definitely justify it as a stakeout. Because Charlie did have one thing right: Lisa was the first eyewitness, and if this monster cared about that, it would be back. She'd left out an important piece though. Charlie herself was the second eyewitness, and the fact she'd chased it probably didn't sit well with the monster either. That meant she was a target too. And if it was a qareen or something like it, it wasn't going to be too bothered by locked doors.

He almost passed the New Age shop as he followed the tracker they'd installed in the Gremlin before driving it up here. At the last minute, though, he pulled into the lot and killed the engine. He'd already checked out the grounds earlier. When the shop owner had come out to investigate him, he'd tried the FBI line, but she'd seen right through him.

"You get that you can actually just say you're a hunter," she'd said, rolling her eyes at him.

"Fine. So, yeah, still, checking out the most recent scene, trying to figure this out."

"I thought it was some redheaded Scottish witch who, just to get it out of the way, I've never seen. Charlie asked me about her." 

Sam had given a short laugh at that. "Right. Well, that's what Charlie saw, but that witch has an alibi. Besides, didn't Lisa tell you what she saw?"

"Yeah, some guy that thought she should know who he was." Shrug. "So?"

"So according to Charlie, there was only one... thing."

"Which she thought was some kind of glamour, right. Oh, shit."

"Right. So, now we don't know what we're looking for. Some kind of shapeshifter that can look like two things at once, apparently."

"And is there such a thing?"

"Not that we've been able to find, but it wouldn't be the first time running up against something that isn’t exactly in the books."

She'd walked him through what she knew of the ground they'd covered that night. There was no EMF, which she'd already checked. No sulfur. No surprise. 

He'd even checked out the woods where Charlie had said she'd chased the thing. No trace of anything unusual, even in the light of day.

Re-checking at night wasn't likely to turn up anything, but sometimes things looked just different enough by dark. He got out and examined first the ground, then the stairs. Charlie said the thing hadn't touched anything, and the police hadn't even attempted to pull prints off the handrails. It would be too hard to sort through all the different prints that must be on there, and with both witnesses confirming it hadn't grabbed anything besides Lisa's shirt, well, what would be the point?

The woods might be more useful. Did it have a lair of some kind? If so, Sam would rather find it by daylight, but maybe, if it was nocturnal, he'd get lucky and catch the thing coming or going. He pulled out his flashlight but didn't turn it on just yet, looking for any sign of bioluminescence in the branches from about his own eye level to waist level. It was a long shot, but there was enough weirdness here, they kind of deserved a break.

Sadly, this was not that break.

Clicking the light on and drawing his gun, he stepped into the trees. He'd loaded up with silver bullets, just in case that would actually work like on a normal shapeshifter. He tried to follow the same path he'd taken earlier, sweeping the light and his gun along the path and the woods on either side. By the time he reached the rock Charlie had described as the point where she'd realized she'd lost it, Sam had scared several small critters, but hadn't spotted anything himself. Not letting his guard down, he returned the way he'd come, gun still drawn.

It wasn't until he was back in the car that he put the gun away. He wondered idly, if the thing came after him, who would it look like? Jessica? Ruby? Either of them could parallel Dean to his Lisa, but the Rowena-Charlie thing was still kind of a mystery, assuming Charlie was telling the truth. Sam didn't think she was lying to him, but she might be lying to herself like Dean had been trying to do with Amara. If so, then it probably was a qareen, and it would probably appear to him as Ruby. Though that wouldn't work anymore, he didn't think. She'd long lost her hold over him. 

Who or what would represent his "deepest, darkest desire" now? That he honestly didn't know. His feelings for Eileen weren't particularly dark or forbidden in any way. Just thinking of her brought a smile to his face, though it was bittersweet. Not forbidden, but not exactly accessible from Ireland.

If Charlie was right about it being shame or horror, well, that was easy. Problem was, he'd have a hell of a time figuring out if it was really Lucifer or not.

Shaking himself out of his pointless musing, he turned the car on and pulled out his phone, bringing up the map that would lead him to his stakeout. Plenty of time for woolgathering once he was there.

~*~

As the credits rolled, Charlie contemplated her next move. She should probably go, but she really didn't want to. Part of that was wanting to be sure Lisa was safe, sure, but part was purely selfish.

Lisa got up and popped the videocassette out of the VCR. She put it back in its box and returned it to the shelf, her hand hovering over _The Empire Strikes Back_. After a moment's deliberation, she rested her hand on the tape and turned to look at Charlie.

"What do you think? Keep going?"

"I am always in favor of binge-watching the classics," Charlie replied.

"You got it." Lisa smiled, slight creases forming around her eyes. It was adorable.

When she'd put the next tape in and returned to the couch, she was sitting infinitesimally closer. Not close enough to be in Charlie's space, but enough to notice the difference.

_Screw it._

Charlie scooted in closer until they were shoulder to shoulder. That got her a surprised look and a raised eyebrow. She answered both with a shrug and shifted to rest her head on Lisa's shoulder. 

"Ready?"

"Always." 

Lisa's shoulder shook with laughter. Charlie was going to have to be careful with making her laugh if she didn't want a headache, which she most emphatically didn't.

"You know, as much as I love this one," Lisa said, "it kind of feels like the big story doesn't move much."

"Well, okay, the story doesn't move a whole lot, but the characters sure do. Leia confesses her love to Han, Luke finds out Vader's his father, Lando takes a stand when he realizes the Empire's screwing him," Charlie said. 

"Yeah, it just feels like it's missing a clear win." Lisa shrugged. 

"Middle book curse," Charlie agreed rolling her eyes up to look at Lisa now that her pillow had stopped moving. "Even Tolkein couldn't escape it."

Lisa hit play and tossed the remote to the coffee table, the conversation over, at least for now. 

For a moment, Charlie wished they had enough time to marathon _Lord of the Rings_ , too. But with any luck, they'd have the case solved and resolved in another day or so. And by Tuesday, Charlie planned on being gone. Not only did she not need to be here to do the ritual, she kind of thought it made more sense to go back to where she'd woken up. Brigid had been iffy about that. Apparently, the Lake Michigan Triangle screwed up more than navigation equipment, if the stories were true. But this was a spell that was actually related to the thing somehow. It just made sense to do it there, if she could.

Yeah, sticking around for movie mega-marathons was not going to be a thing in Charlie's future. That thought pinched more than it seemed like it should. She wasn't getting attached, was she? Because things were weird enough without that.

Who was she kidding? She was definitely attached, forget the "getting" part. And yeah, it was weird, but there wasn't actually much Charlie could do about that. In fact, Dean should be the one getting over the weirdness. Sam's texts hadn't said much, but it was the stuff in between the lines that was the loudest.

He'd had a nerve obliviating Lisa like that. Both of them did, really. How did that even work, anyway? Were the memories erased or just blocked? Like, if Lisa found herself up against a ghost, would she suddenly remember to throw salt at it or take a swing at it with an iron poker? And if not, how exactly was this about keeping her safe?

Asking Lisa any of that was out of the question for obvious reasons. Charlie's fingers itched to reach for her phone and demand answers from Dean or Cas or both. But that would involve explaining what she was doing, which was also right out. Lisa had to have worked out by now that Charlie's initial cover story had been weak, but she was probably thinking actual FBI as opposed to Buffy.

Besides, did she really think she'd get a straight answer from those two? Heh, insert joke here, right? Except it really wasn't funny. Lisa had said a thing or three that Charlie was almost certain had to do with not trusting her memory. Of course, that's how it would seem, not knowing what had happened. But the point was it really, really bothered her. Had either of those two idiots thought of that? No, they hadn't, or they would've come up with some other solution that didn't involve making Lisa question the reality of things she'd seen and done. That was likely to cause its own problems for her. Again, had they thought of that? No, they had not.

Luke was getting stuffed into a tauntaun, which probably really did smell worse than (almost) anything Charlie had ever smelled. Charlie shuddered. That scene had always bugged her. Yeah, she wanted Luke to live, and the tauntaun was already dying but ... well, but nothing, she supposed. It really was the logical solution to the immediate problem, and the cold was already killing the tauntaun anyway. Something about it just really bothered her, and she couldn't help drawing parallels o the Lisa situation. She supposed it was the lack of choices all around.

Charlie supposed she could see what Dean had been trying to accomplish. It was kind of ass-backwards, though. The problem wasn't whether Lisa could remember Dean, though apparently whatever had happened was traumatic enough that it was probably a blessing she didn't remember any of it. No, the bigger problem was whether the big bads remembered her. Because Charlie was pretty sure if he'd heard that anything happened to her, he'd have come running, at any time that his face wasn't plastered all over the news as suspect number one, anyway. Even now, if they sent up a flare, he'd probably come in guns blazing and deal with the consequences later. Point was, if anyone wanted to get to Dean, they could still go after Lisa and make sure he heard about it. Whether or not she remembered him didn't have any impact on that.

Shit. Just like he'd come charging in guns blazing and damn the consequences, Mark or no Mark, if anything happened to her. She still didn't know just exactly what had happened right after she'd gone and gotten herself killed. But it was clear it hadn't been pretty. What exactly would he do if someone or something came after both of them, after making sure his face was plastered everywhere? It wasn’t like no big bads had ever done that on purpose.

She reached for her phone and sent Sam a quick text.

[Are we sure Leviathan can only do one shape at a time?]

The reply came faster than she'd expected.

[Dean says even in Purgatory they were only one thing at a time.]

That didn't prove anything, though. That was their home turf. They'd have no reason to hide anything.

_Still doesn't explain Rowena._

"Everything okay?"

Charlie plastered a smile on her face, and she could tell it wasn't very convincing.

"Just had an idea about the case. Ran it by Sam and he'd already checked it out though."

Lisa nodded slowly and unpaused the movie as Luke swam in the bacta tank.

They were sitting a bit closer than before, which was nice, but kind of distracting. Especially when Lisa paused the movie again.

"So, wait, is this another date, or are you on the job?"

"Both, kinda?" Charlie tried to smile again. This time even she could feel that it wasn't working. "I mean, I'd have come back anyway. But, yeah, kinda distracted by trying to make sure that jerk doesn't come back."

"Is that really a risk?"

"You said he thought you'd know him," Charlie said. "Kinda doesn't sound all that random, you know?"

"But maybe that's just his gig. Throw people off so they get confused and he can rob them or whatever. Especially if he's the reason those other people have gone missing."

 _Oh frack.  
_  
"Did you know any of them?"

"All of them," Lisa said. "I mean, it's kind of a small town."

"Not small enough to know everyone," Charlie protested. The sudden queasiness in her stomach was going full-on sick.

"Well, no," Lisa agreed. "But I used to also have a class for the employees at the hospital where Erin works and she took a class or two. The soccer coach, history teacher, and guidance counselor all work … worked … work at Ben’s school."

"Huh."

"What?"

"Just, that's the first connection there's been between everyone that's been attacked."

"Charlie, it's a small town." Lisa gave a nervous little laugh. "And it's not like they're all my best friends or anything. I bet if you dig far enough you'd find something else. Like we all have the same hairdresser or something."

There was that. Time to get that worried look off her face, because it wasn't helping anything.

"You're probably right. Still, gotta be thorough. Lemme just pass that along." She swiped her screen on again.

[All the vics know Lisa. Not well, though. Kinda thin.]

This time the reply was almost immediate.

[You armed?]

[With what? We don't even know what it is.]

[Gun would make me feel better.]

[Got a kitchen full of knives. Gonna have to do.]

[Charlie.]

That was the thing. She'd never seen much point to getting a handgun. Regular bullets weren't good against most things, and she hadn't taken any werewolf cases. There was a shotgun in her trunk with salt rounds in case of ghosts, but that was it. Handguns meant either getting a concealed carry permit in basically every state (no thank you) or dealing with the legal fallout of not having one (also no thank you) and with no real plus, well. Yeah, no point.

Of course, it could slow a few things down, so maybe she needed to rethink that.

Her phone pinged again.

[I'll stake out the house.]

Charlie frowned, then got up and peeked through one of the curtains. Yup. Big ol' Buick.

Ping.

[Okay, maybe I already was.]

As if this date weren't awkward enough.

"Charlie?"

"Apparently Sam decided to keep an eye from outside." She let the curtain drop.

[If you're on duty, I'm getting back to my date.]

With that she set the phone back on the coffee table and glared at it, daring it to ping again as she sat next to Lisa. It didn't.

"Should I invite him in?" Lisa asked.

"Nah. He decided to do a stakeout without telling me, he doesn't get any popcorn." She winked.

"You sure?"

"I'm sure." Huh. She actually felt a lot more relaxed now. There was a part of her that was kind of pissed off at herself for that. But she decided it wasn't about having a guy standing guard or even a more experienced hunter. It was just that if someone else was making sure nothing came at them, she could focus on more enjoyable things. She leaned over and gave Lisa a peck on the lips. "More movie?"

Lisa looked startled but not pissed. She pushed play and settled back to watch, shoulder to shoulder with Charlie. Then leaned to rest her head on Charlie's shoulder.

Still kind of awkward, if Charlie thought about Sam being outside. Not as awkward as it would be having him inside though.


	6. Chapter 6

Sam started awake at the knock on his window. He thanked whatever instinct kept him from pulling his gun, because if it had been a cop, that would've been a problem. Not that he wanted to draw on Charlie, but at least she'd get it. He cranked down the window.

"What?"

"Sleeping on the job?" Charlie asked.

"Shut up. I'm guessing you were too."

"Not telling." She winked.

"Yeah, I don't want to know." He ran his fingers through his hair. "What time is it?"

"Seven. Want some breakfast?"

"Uhhh, I'm not sure that's a good idea." In fact, he was pretty sure it was a terrible one.

"You're going to have to interview her at some point, not just go on secondhand info, even from me," Charlie pointed out. Fair enough, he'd already realized that. "Why not get it over with?"

He really didn't have a good argument for that, so he got out of the car, locked it, and followed her in.

The house was nice. Similar layout to the two he'd seen before, so her taste was consistent. He noted all the potential points of entry, none with salt or sigils or anything. He got that Charlie would've had a hard time explaining any of that, plus it was likely that none of that would work against a qareen or whatever this was.

The rich smell of coffee brewing was enough to lead him to the kitchen if he hadn't already been following Charlie. And there Lisa was, flipping pancakes on a small griddle.

"Hey there. I'm Lisa. I'll shake your hand in a minute."

"Hi, Lisa. Sam. And yeah, no worries. Thanks for inviting me in."

"It's the least I could do after you apparently stood watch all night." She tilted her head and looked at him carefully. "You sure that was necessary?"

"You're the first witness this guy has left to tell the tale," Sam pointed out. "Charlie's the second. Better safe than sorry."

"I guess." She sighed. "Thank you."

"Just doing my job."

Charlie waved him over to a stool at the island in the middle of the kitchen. He took a seat and scanned the kitchen. Charlie hadn't been kidding: Lisa had an impressive block of knives. He wondered how new they were, if maybe they were something she and Dean had picked out together, not that she'd know. Probably there were several things in this house that dated back to when she'd lived with Dean, because why wouldn't she just bring them from home to home? No pictures, obviously. He wondered if Cas had gotten rid of them or if Lisa had already done that when she broke up with Dean.

This was definitely weird.

Lisa plated the pancakes and brought them over while Charlie poured three mugs of coffee. Sam took a grateful sip as soon as she handed it to him.

"Since when do you take your coffee black?" Charlie asked.

"Since I didn't want to wait to add anything," he replied with a chuckle. It wasn't too bitter. He did add a little milk, though.

"So, Charlie tells me you have some questions for me?" Lisa asked as she took her own seat and buttered her pancakes before pouring a bit of maple syrup—the real stuff—over them.

"Right." He accepted the syrup and poured a bit over his own stack before passing it to Charlie. "So, I know you already talked to the cops, and I've already spoken to Charlie. A lot of this will seem repetitious, but I do need to go through it all. Could you start by walking me through what happened?"

She nodded. "So, I was leaving work after teaching my Thursday evening class. Everybody else was long gone, since it took me a minute to reorganize the room. I was about to get in my car when this guy comes out of nowhere."

"Now, when you say nowhere..."

"I mean, it was dark, so maybe I just didn't see him out there, but he was kind of hard to miss, you know?"

Sam nodded and took a bite of his pancakes. "Mmm. These are delicious. So, then what?"

"He just started talking to me like I should know him. Just generic stuff at first, like saying it was a beautiful night."

Sam nodded. 

"When I tried to leave, he said to stop being like that and why wasn't I happy to see him."

"And you don't remember ever seeing him before?"

She shook her head. "Like I said, hard to miss. He kept it up for a bit, and when I told him again that I didn't know him, he said that was 'completely impossible.'"

"Huh."

Lisa paused to take a sip of her own coffee before she continued.

"I know it was stupid, but I tried to set off the alarm in the building by throwing my phone at the window."

"Well, it doesn't sound like he'd have let you make a call," Sam said. "Unless you have a single-button emergency setting of some kind."

Lisa shook her head. "My old phone did. Now it's an icon on the screen, so you need to be able to see it."

"Talk about a design flaw," Charlie said. "Not that I want to go back to flip phones, but sometimes I want to go back to flip phones."

"You?" Sam asked, clutching his hand over his heart dramatically. "You want to go backwards on tech?"

"Shut up, Sammy," she said with a glare. The twinkle in her eye said she remembered the last time she'd said that and he'd better not laugh about it. "Just saying it'd be nice to keep some of the things that were good about the old stuff."

"No argument there," Lisa said. "Anyway, I'm not sure if the glass was too tough or my throw was too weak, but it didn't work."

Sam gave her a minute to take a breath and a bite of her breakfast before asking her to go on.

"That's when Charlie showed up. He let go of me, and I made a break for the building, got the door open, then grabbed my phone up off the porch floor and called 911."

"And you chased the perpetrator?" he asked Charlie.

She washed down her mouthful of pancake with some coffee before answering, "Yeah. Didn't catch him obviously."

"But you said you saw a woman," Lisa said.

"Yeah, but... that's impossible, right?" Charlie asked. "I mean, you saw him for longer than I did. I never got that close."

"Yeah, but you said..." Lisa paused, closing her eyes. "There was a second, right when you first yelled out and he whipped his head around..."

"What did you see?" Sam asked.

"It doesn't matter. Probably my memory playing tricks on me," Lisa said. "It does that."

Sam tried not to visibly wince. Yeah, there was no way that hadn't left scars.

"What _do_ you remember?" he pressed. "Even if it seems... weird."

"When he whipped his head around to see who had just yelled, for a split second, I swear I think I saw long red hair. But that was your description—" she looked over at Charlie "—so I probably added it in after the fact or something."

Sam shared a glance with Charlie. Looked like it was the first time she'd heard this too.

"Hard to say," he finally said. "But you never know what can turn out to be a valuable clue. Sometimes it's the things that seem the least significant. Such as, did you notice any tattoos or other distinguishing marks?"

Lisa shook her head. "You've seen the sketch. Charlie said you know who it is?"

"I know who it looks like," Sam corrected gently. "I try never to assume things are as they seem."

"I guess that must come naturally with your line of work," Lisa said.

"You have no idea," he replied. "So, marks?"

Lisa closed her eyes again, then opened them, shaking her head. "I didn't see anything on his face or arms. Everything else was covered."

Sam nodded. It had been a long shot. He was much more interested in that flash of red hair she'd seen. He was pretty sure that was an actual memory, which meant that whatever it was didn't have absolute control over which person saw what, at least not when startled. That could be useful. He wasn't sure how, just yet, but there was no such thing as an insignificant detail when dealing with unknown monsters.

"And you had an injury, right?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. I mean, mostly just bruising. The cut seems to be healing okay."

"Mind if I look?"

"Seriously?"

"Didn't the cops?" 

"They took a picture. You must have seen it."

Sam nodded. "Just want to compare."

Lisa exchanged a look with Charlie before shrugging and rolling up her sleeve. There was a small bandage on her forearm, which she peeled back to show a completely normal cut that looked to be healing completely normally, barely half an inch in length. He took a picture anyway and thanked her. 

"Did any of that actually help anything?" Lisa asked as she went to take another bite of pancake.

"Believe it or not, yes," Sam said. "Let me give you my card in case you think of anything else."

"Will do, Agent Page," she said, reading the card.

"Just Sam is fine," he said. Because this was all weird enough without dealing with the alias on top of it.

"Okay, Sam." Lisa smiled. "Now eat up."

Sam smiled back at her and proceeded to dig in. He glanced over at Charlie, whose eyes were full of questions he didn't have the answers for. He wasn't sure what the next step should even be.

~*~

It was Sunday. That was the first thing Ben thought as he woke up, which was weird, because he normally didn't care what day it was. Not enough for it to be his first thought of the day. He'd felt the same way about Friday, of course, since he was excited to come here and check out his first-choice university. But today, well, he wanted to see his mom again, obviously, but he wasn't in that big of a hurry to leave.

He looked over to the other bed in the room. Tim was still sleeping. They hadn't spent that much time together. He was definitely more of the jock type, though not obnoxious about it. Still, Ben hoped maybe they'd end up attending together. He was a decent enough roommate, though he supposed most people were on their best behavior for the first couple of days. Only couple of days in this case.

Ben hauled himself out of bed and grabbed his shower box and a change of clothes. Not too many other kids were up yet, so he didn't have to wait for a shower. This whole getting up with the dawn thing had its advantages. It didn't take him long to get cleaned up and dressed, and by the time he got back to his room, Tim was up.

"Dude, why would you get up this early on a _weekend_?"

Ben shrugged. "I heard there's an even better breakfast setup than yesterday's. Why waste time?"

Tim didn't look convinced, but he didn't say anything else while he grabbed his own stuff (including his new bookstore-bought shower box) and went to get cleaned up for the day too.

When he and Tim finally got to the cafeteria, it was already busy. 

"Told you," Ben said. Then grabbed his new friend's arm and pointed. "Dude, there's an omelet station! How does a college cafeteria have an omelet station?"

"They're just trying to impress us," Tim said. He wasn't exactly dragging his feet to jump into that line, though.

"I think it's working," Ben said.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected. Maybe during the week kids just grabbed cereal from the bins and dumped milk in it. Some had yesterday, though he thought that was mostly because one of the milk spouts was chocolate. But if weekends (or maybe just Sundays?) were like this, he might actually not be in as big a rush to go home every Friday as he'd thought he would. Maybe every other.

Once they had their omelets (with everything, because of course) and some toast and muffins, they looked for a table. Alex waved them over.

"Where's Jean?" Tim asked.

"She woke up late," Alex said. "Also, she apparently takes longer doing her hair than my sister, and that's saying something."

They all laughed at that and settled in to their breakfast.

"So," Ben asked between bites, "who's still planning to apply here?"

Hands went up all around the table. He nodded.

"Yeah, me too. I mean, I was going to anyway. This weekend would've had to really suck for me not to. Their program's just too good."

"I'm still not sure about being this far from home," Alex said. "It's not like I'd be able to go home except for holidays. Though from what I hear about the coursework for nursing, maybe that's a good thing. I’d probably have to make a permanent reservation for one of those study rooms in the library."

"It kinda depends where I get the best deal," Tim said. "I mean, nobody's exactly scouting me for scholarships, but I'm gonna apply anyway."

"Yeah, there is that part," Ben said. His mom kept telling him not to worry about it, but he couldn't help it. Granted, engineering was a degree that should make paying off loans pretty easy, but he was hoping not to graduate buried in loans at all. It had been just him and his mom for pretty much ever, and she'd always had to take care of him. He was almost eighteen. It was time for him to help out. "What about jobs? Any of you work?"

"I have a part-time job, yeah," Alex said. "Just some typing and filing at the station, but it's some money of my own."

"McD's here," Tim said. "They even have a program so I can probably work at the one in town here."

"Huh," Ben said. "Maybe I should try that. I help out at one of the garages in town, but it's not exactly a chain like that. I’d rather fix cars than flip burgers, but it'd be nice to have something that I already kind of knew before I got here."

"Don't forget," Alex said, "most of us will probably have work-study jobs, too."

They all nodded at that and ate in silence for a few minutes.

Ben wondered how Eric and the others were doing. They'd exchanged a few texts here and there, but they'd all been shuffled into different groups and had been on slightly different schedules for all the activities all weekend. They'd have to catch up this afternoon, though, so they could head back. 

Jean flopped down into the chair next to Tim, her plate oozing with French toast and syrup. Her hair was in some kind of fancy braid, so Ben could understand why it took her awhile. He wondered if she'd be able to keep that up once she was in college. Wondered what would change about all of them between now and when they graduated high school for that matter.

"What's up for today?" Jean asked. "I left my schedule in my room."

"We've got some sort of thing at the theater," Alex said. "Then the big assembly before we have to pack up and leave."

"What time do you have to start driving to make it back to Sioux Falls?" Ben asked.

“It’s not going to matter,” she said with a groan. “It’s going to take forever anyway. I don’t have any Monday classes, so I’ll probably stop somewhere in Wisconsin for the night.”

And here Ben thought _his_ Monday was going to suck. If nothing else, this weekend had really driven home how much everything was going to change once they got out of high school.

~*~

Charlie all but shoved Sam out the door to go back to the motel and get some real sleep once he'd finished his breakfast.

"You just poured me two cups of coffee and you think I can sleep?" he demanded.

"I think you're going to sprain something if you keep trying to hide those yawns," she retorted. "Yeah, like that one."

"Seriously, Sam," Lisa said, "thank you for keeping an eye out last night."

"Just doing my job." He shrugged. "But you're welcome."

Another yawn tried to split his face in half from what Charlie could see, and he finally left.

"So what's on your agenda today?" Lisa asked.

"Whole lot of nothing," Charlie replied. "Kind of in a holding pattern until and unless we find out some more."

"Or your next assignment, right?"

_Shit. Right. Cover story._

"Right. Of course."

Lisa looked at her suspiciously but didn't say anything further, just started cleaning up the breakfast dishes, which Charlie quickly jumped in to help with.

"You don't have to," Lisa started.

"I want to," Charlie said. And surprisingly enough, she did. Okay, washing dishes was not her favorite thing ever, but with Lisa there, it didn't suck. "So, what've you got planned today?"

"Ben should be home sometime this evening," Lisa said with a little smile. "He seems to really like UMich."

"That where you went?"

Lisa laughed. "No college for me. I mean, I probably could've done kinesiology or something, if I'd known it existed back then. All my schooling since high school has been in yoga studios and ashrams."

"Cool." Charlie smiled. That really fit. She couldn't see Lisa burning the midnight oil over calculus or something, but practicing poses and how to help people get into them? Yeah, that she could see. She picked up her coffee mug and took a sip of the cooling liquid.

"I don't know if it's cool, but it worked for me." There was that smile again. "Ben wants to be a mechanical engineer. He's got a real gift for fixing things. I don't know where he got it, but he's definitely making good use of it. Probably the only reason my car's still road-worthy."

Charlie inhaled her coffee and sputtered as she tried not to choke on it.

"You okay?" Lisa tossed down the dish towel and took the mug out of Charlie's hand, setting it on the counter.

"'Mfine," Charlie gasped. "BRB."

"Oh no you don't," Lisa said, her hand closing firmly around Charlie's wrist. "You are not going to go choke to death in my bathroom."

Charlie didn't think she was at much risk for choking to death over a little coffee down the wrong tube, but considering she couldn't stop coughing, maybe a second opinion was just what she needed.

Lisa patted her back firmly and told her to keep coughing. Considering it didn't seem like she was ever going to stop, that seemed pretty silly, but Charlie couldn't get enough air to say so. Tears welled up in her eyes.

When the coughing started to slow, the pats gentled until Lisa was just rubbing circles on Charlie's back. Charlie leaned into the comforting touch, still coughing every few seconds. She felt like she'd been hacking away for hours, and she could tell her chest and abs were going to be sore from all this.

"You okay?" Lisa repeated.

Charlie nodded. "Yeah. So, swallowing. Gotta get better at that."

"I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole," Lisa said, eyebrow raised. She poured Charlie a glass of water and handed it to her. "Maybe practice with this?"

Charlie forced a smile and took a cautious sip. Her throat was grateful for the cool liquid and didn't even try to send it into her lungs. Of course, she wasn't being blindsided by a ten-ton realization.

_Nature or nurture, Ben is so Dean's kid. And I'm sleeping with his mom. Ben's, not Dean's. Which is apparently an actual possibility, come to think of it, but ew. This is weird enough._

She almost choked again at that thought. Not the weirdness, but the fact that she'd thought of this as "sleeping with" Lisa. Not "having a steamy weekend with" or "fooling around with." "Sleeping with." That wasn't quite as sappy as "making love" or some other romance novel crap, but it was headed in that direction. She set down the glass and looked at Lisa, who was still watching her with concern written in the lines around her eyes.

With a pang, Charlie could see this being any random Sunday morning, maybe packing Ben back off to school for the week after brunch was cleaned up, then hanging out watching movies or maybe teaching Lisa to play Fallout 4. (Or maybe 5? Was there a Fallout 5 out? Crap, by now they might be up to Fallout 6. So, then, it might be less Charlie teaching Lisa and more the two of them learning the game together.) It was perfect, and perfectly impossible.

_I should go._

She really should. But she couldn't make the words come out and couldn't force her feet in the direction of the door.

"I don't really have anything planned until I get dinner started," Lisa said. "We could move on to _Return of the Jedi_. Pretty sure that one's your favorite." Her eyes lowered to Charlie's hip and she smirked.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Charlie said, trying to look innocent. "But you twisted my arm."

"I can see that. Lots of twisting needed." Lisa laughed.

"Didn't say you twisted it hard." Charlie winked at her. "What time is Ben due home? Wouldn't want him to think you sublet his room as soon as he was out the door for a couple of days."

"He's supposed to text me when they leave." Lisa shook her head. "Probably won't get here until six or seven though." 

"That gives us plenty of time." Charlie very carefully didn't say for what. It was still morning, after all, and the movie wasn't _that_ long.

"Yeah, it does." Lisa hung up the dish towel and set Charlie's water glass in the sink. "I think you've had enough to drink for a little while."

Charlie rolled her eyes but didn't argue the point. She let herself be steered into the living room and settled onto the couch while Lisa set up the VCR with the movie. She didn't even bother trying to question it when Lisa sat right next to her and interlaced their fingers.

Leaving here was going to suck. She might as well enjoy the ride.

~*~

"What do you mean it's canceled?" Ben asked.

"They're not saying why," the RA said with a shake of her head. "But something happened over at the theater last night, I guess. They have it all roped off."

"That's weird," Tim said.

Alex just looked uncomfortable. 

"I hope nobody got hurt," Jean said.

"I don't know," the RA said. "I gotta spread the word. Enjoy your surprise free time while we figure out what we're doing with your track next. Or just go to the next thing, maybe."

"You think maybe some kids were drinking over there last night and got into a fight or something?" Tim asked.

"I don't think they rope off a crime scene for that," Alex said.

"You think your mom could find out more?" Tim asked.

"Maybe? I'm not really sure I should ask her, though," Alex said. "Kinda don't want her worrying, you know?"

Yeah, Ben wasn't about to advertise this to his mom either. Especially not since he still really wanted to go here. So, some kids probably did something stupid and someone got hurt? That happened everywhere, right? It wasn't like there was anything special about it happening here, but his mom would totally make like there was.

"Won't it make the news?" Tim asked.

"Most things don't," Alex said. "And when they do? Half the time, it's not what really happened. You'd be amazed."

Ben shrugged. He supposed she'd know. "So, what do you want to do in the meantime?"

"I'm getting seconds," Tim said, pushing back from the table and heading for the waffle station.

Alex had already pulled out her tablet and was tapping at it.

"So, homework for you?" Jean asked.

"Just looking to see if there's anything on social media. The university probably wants to keep whatever happened quiet, but that doesn't mean that everybody does."

After a second, she got really pale. Without a word, she got up from the table and grabbed her dishes but left the tablet behind.

"Where's she going?" Jean asked.

Ben went around to the other side of the table so he could see what Alex had found. She had Twitter up, and apparently UMich was trending.

"Animal attack?" Ben asked. "In the theater or like outside it somewhere?"

"They wouldn't do that here, would they?" Jean asked.

"Doubt it," Ben said. "Weird that it got inside, though."

Jean was still picking at her French toast but not really eating it. It was kind of making a tacky, disgusting mess. He wished he had some idea what he was supposed to do in a situation like this. There wasn't really anything he could do about the situation itself. He wasn't sure what was going to make Jean feel better, though, which seemed like something he should be able to do something about.

Tim came back then, his waffle covered in every type of berry Ben had ever heard of and more whipped cream than waffle.

"Dude, you have got to check this out!" he said. ~~~~

When Tim had finished and Jean had given up on her breakfast as a lost cause, they went outside. It was a decent morning, if nothing else. Weird that something so awful could happen on such a nice day, really, though Ben supposed it was only in the movies that all the bad crap happened on "dark and stormy nights."

Ben pulled out his phone and sent a Facebook message to Alex asking if she was coming back. Right after he hit send, he heard a chime to his left. Alex was just coming around the corner. She looked better, or at least less like she was about to be sick.

"Yeah, I'm here," she said. "Figured there was no way Jody wasn't going to catch wind of that. Better she hears it from me first."

"Good point," Jean said.

"She know anything more than Twitter?" Ben asked.

"Not yet, but she's looking into it. I mean, she doesn't exactly have jurisdiction around here, but she's pretty good at getting information when she wants it." She smiled a little after she said that, though it didn't quite reach her eyes.

The others talked about what they wanted to do until the next thing they were scheduled for, which was another hour and a half away. Tim was all for going back to the sports center, while Alex wanted to see if they could get a look at the university hospital. Ben kind of wanted to see what they could see over at the theater, but he didn't say anything. No way the cops would let a bunch of kids see anything, and Alex had been pretty freaked out. 

"Hospital might be kind of blocked off too," he pointed out as he finished up. "I mean, depending on whether they took the person there or whatever."

"Oh. Yeah." Alex deflated. Actually, the look she shot him was kind of disappointed. Oh. Had she wanted to try and see if the victim was still being treated? He supposed that made sense for a future nurse. They were probably in surgery or something by now, if they were even still alive.

"Sports center!" Tim pumped his fist. 

"Dude, that's all the way across campus," Jean said. "Why don't we just head for the Student Union? I bet there's stuff we can do while we wait for the next thing."

"Where even is the Student Union from here?" Ben asked. "I remember we were there last night, but it was kind of dark."

Jean was pretty sure she knew, so she started off towards what Ben was pretty sure was actually the Admissions building. Ben's breakfast shifted around weirdly in his stomach. He hoped they'd get this figured out quick. Never mind what his mom might think, _he_ didn't want to feel like it wasn't safe to come here.

~*~

As the movie wrapped up, Lisa found herself wanting to stretch the day out a bit more. There were still several hours before Ben was due home, after all. But... there were several hours before Ben was due home and Charlie probably needed to be working with Sam, right? Though surely Sam would've called. Lisa would feel much better if they found the creep who'd tried to grab her before Ben got back. Sam couldn't sit watch over the house every night, after all.

"I should probably check in," Charlie said. "Find out how the investigation is going."

"Of course." Lisa forced a smile onto her face that she let fall away as she set the tape to rewind and picked up the glasses and plates that had migrated into the living room.

Charlie picked up her phone and tapped at it a bit, probably texting Sam.

As Lisa rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, she reminded herself that she could have more weekends like this—preferably without a stalker casting a shadow over them—when Ben went away to school. She was just feeling sad this one was over because it was the first time she'd had a weekend like this since... probably since before Ben was born. That she knew of, anyway.

Charlie wandered into the kitchen, phone in hand but just hanging by her side.

"Any word?" Lisa asked.

"Not so much." Charlie shrugged. "Could be in the middle of interviewing someone."

"Or taking a nap."

"Or that." Charlie hopped up onto the stool that had somehow become hers over the past couple of days. "Either way, kinda not sure what my next move should be."

"Do you need to take more photos, or do you have what you need?"

"Right. That's... I have kind of fallen down on the job." She rested her chin in her hand. "Some of the main shots I still need are the less townie ones, though. It'd be good if they fit with the rest, but they really don't have to."

"What kind of shots are those?"

"Well, every game has to have a bad guy, and they've always got to have a lair, right?"

"I guess."

"So, then, there needs to be somewhere that the gamer finds the bad guy. Abandoned warehouses work fine for cities, but not so much with the small towns."

"You're looking for what, then? Old barns? Because we're not quite that rural here either."

"No, that's the thing. Barns work for the real countryside games, though there aren't many of those."

"Soooo, creepy abandoned houses?"

"That'd work. Got any of those?"

The hairs on the back of Lisa's neck stood up.

"You do. I can totally see it in your eyes." Charlie's face lit up. "Where?"

"No way." Lisa crossed her arms and leaned against the counter. "You might have noticed, we have an actual bad guy situation going on. What if that's where he's hiding?"

"Then I get photos to send Sam as well as my boss," Charlie said with a shrug. 

It sounded reasonable enough, but something was off about the way she said it. 

"It's the middle of the day, " Charlie continued. "People have only gone missing at night. This guy might've left town anyway, but even if it is an actual lair and he's in there, he's probably not coming out."

"Unless he sees us," poured out of Lisa's mouth before she could stop it.

"Us?"

"I mean, if it's that safe, why not?"

Charlie opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, clearly trying to think of a come-back that didn't implicate her for trying to go play Nancy Drew by herself.

Some corner of Lisa's brain was screaming at her that this was a bad idea. She should just let Charlie go do whatever she was going to do. Lisa had no business being protective of her. She was going to be leaving town in a day or two anyway.

That sucked. No wonder she was looking for reasons to put it off.

"I guess if it's just recon, there's no harm," Charlie finally said.

"Exactly." Why did Lisa feel relieved? She'd just talked her way into showing Charlie all the less-safe parts of town. She should be freaked out. Instead, she was pushing off the counter and heading to the entryway to grab her jacket off its hook and toss Charlie's to her. "And while we're at it, you can tell me how in the world you ended up working with the FBI."

"Didn't I already?"

"No." It might not be a great idea to push on that. What if it really was some kind of classified top-secret thing? Well, if it was, she probably had an official story to give. That idea sent a little thrill down Lisa's spine that she firmly tamped down.

Charlie shrugged into her jacket and fished her keys out of the pocket.

"Shouldn't I drive?" Lisa asked. "I'm the one who knows where we're going."

"No!" Charlie said quickly. "I mean, no. I'll get a better feel for the area leading up to whatever you're going to show me if I drive it."

"Okay, but it's a little hard to take photos while you're driving."

"Not like I'm going to take them while the car's moving anyway." Charlie crossed her arms. "Seriously, either we take my car together, or I take it solo."

"You're serious."

"Deadly."

That actually made a lot of sense if Charlie was actually an undercover agent. She probably had weapons or even just gadgets of some kind in the car. 

_So, then, I should be glad she won't be hanging around, right? Ben doesn't need to be around that kind of danger._

Lisa wasn't convinced, but it didn't matter. For now, the issue was not letting Charlie go off to check out the old Mallon place by herself.

"Fine. Your car it is."

Charlie's smile looked like she wasn't entirely sure she was glad she'd won that one. Lisa could relate.

~*~

Sam woke up with a start, and it took him a minute to place which crappy motel he was in and why. The numbers on the bedside clock read either 2:20 or 3:30, depending on which lights were out. His phone confirmed that the clock really sucked because it was 2:30. He scrubbed a hand over his face and rolled out of bed to go shower, stopping just long enough to start a packet of stale coffee brewing.

By the time he'd taken a shower and changed back into his FBI suit, the coffee was done. Nowhere near as good as what Lisa had made earlier, but it woke him up the rest of the way when he choked it down.

That had been weird, to say the least. It was weird talking to Lisa and having her not recognize him. It had been weird seeing how she was with Charlie. Hell, it had been weird seeing the way Charlie looked at Lisa. He supposed this was something normal people dealt with more regularly, seeing their brother's ex with someone else, especially when that someone else was a friend. Just not usually with the angelic amnesia.

He sighed. There wasn't much else he had to go on. "Sleeping on it" hadn't shaken loose any brilliant ideas. He could go interview the victims' families, he supposed, but that was likely to be a lot more pointless. He'd managed to get some useful info from Lisa, but she'd actually seen the creature. No one else had other than her or Charlie.

If anything happened to either of them, Sam knew Dean would kill him. Hell, if something happened to either of them, Sam would let him. He'd already gotten Charlie killed once, and while he didn't really have any part in what had gone on with Lisa— _other than making Dean promise to go to her once the apocalypse was averted, don't forget that part_ —he felt pretty protective towards her too. He wasn't sure if that was because of Dean, because of Charlie, or just because of her, little as he really knew her. Didn't matter, ultimately. If nothing else, she was a civilian a monster had targeted. That made protecting her his job.

Pulling out his notes, he scanned over them and checked the victims' addresses against the local map. They actually formed a wonky sort of rectangle. There wasn’t an exact center, and the cops must have checked it out already, but there was an area that was almost equidistant from all the victims’ homes. Yeah, checking that out was definitely his next move. He shut off the coffee maker and poured the dregs of the coffee into his cup, tossing it down so quickly there probably hadn't been much point bothering with the cup in between.

He checked his tie in the mirror and straightened his collar. Satisfied that he looked as professional as possible, he grabbed the map and his notes off the bureau, checked his pocket for his car keys and the motel key card, and headed out.

~*~

Charlie was less than thrilled that Lisa had insisted on coming along. On the one hand, yay, more time with this beautiful woman! On the other hand, they were very deliberately scoping out some creepy house that may or may not be the lair of this qareen-ish thing that had already gone after her once. Sure, Charlie shouldn't probably check it out on her own, but her preferred backup would be an experienced hunter, not a (gorgeous, sweet, sexy, adorable) civilian. 

What if the missing people were all in the basement or something? She couldn't exactly go inside with Lisa with her, so that would mean coming back later with him. Well, that would be true whether she was with Lisa or alone, she supposed. Still, she’d feel better if Lisa were safe at home.

_You didn't think that was so safe last night. Neither did Sam._

Charlie shushed her brain. If it wasn't being helpful, it didn't have to contribute at all. And that was not helpful.

Instead, she focused on getting them both settled in the Gremlin and following Lisa's directions to the mystery house. The streets looked normal enough. In fact, they passed a house belonging to one of the victims along the way. So, a bit too quiet, maybe, especially for a nice spring Sunday afternoon, but otherwise pretty normal. Things started to get a little more woodsy after a couple of minutes, though. Nothing _Blair Witch_ -y. Probably nothing Charlie would've noticed on a regular drive. 

The creepy house was, oddly enough, in the middle of a residential street, for a definition of residential that included large amounts of woods between each house lot. And it was definitely the sort of house kids would label "haunted" and dare each other to run up and touch or spend a night inside. The paint was not so much peeling as barely there at this point. The roof was missing several shingles. One of the front windows had a little hole in it like someone had thrown a rock through it.

All in all, definite lair material, so long as the monster didn't mind getting rained on.

"Think that'll work for your game," Lisa asked once they'd stopped along the side of the road.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, definitely spooktacular enough," Charlie agreed. She pulled out her phone, rolled down her window, and took a few shots of the house and the woods surrounding it on three sides. There had been an edge to Lisa's voice, and Charlie was pretty sure that meant her cover was wearing thin. So, what else would she need if she were really collecting images for a game designer to work from? Probably a three-sixty view of the building, but no way that was happening right now. "I'll get some shots of the rest of the street too. Get the overall feel, you know?"

"Uh huh."

Definitely wearing thin, along with Lisa's patience, Charlie decided. She wouldn't like being treated like an ignorant civilian either, but dammit, she was one!

Before she could decide what to say next, Charlie spotted a vaguely familiar-looking Buick headed towards them. When it slowed down and came to a stop across the street from them, Charlie sighed.

Sam got out of his car and strode over to Charlie's.

"What are you two doing here?" he asked. His eyes demanded to know what the hell Charlie thought she was doing bringing Lisa along.

_Fair enough._

"You know, my job? The game needs an image of a creepy house, so Lisa told me where there was one nearby," Charlie said, willing Sam to go along with her cover. "I got some pics of the house itself. Going to take some of the neighborhood in case the artist wants that for ambiance, though personally? I'm all about the middle-of-the-woods vibe this has going on. What are _you_ doing here?"

She could practically see the steam pouring out of Sam's ears.

"So, get this," he said. "This 'creepy house' just so happens to be equidistant from the houses of the other four people that have disappeared, and"—he pointed to Lisa—"yours."

"You got that on a map?" Charlie nudged him away with her door and climbed out of the Gremlin. "Lemme see."

She went over to the Buick, hoping he hadn't locked it. Nope, she was able to get right in, and there was the map, right on the front seat. She leaned over and grabbed it.

"Are you kidding me?" Sam demanded from right behind her.

"Ack!" Charlie straightened up too fast, conking her head on the ceiling of the car before ducking and backing up more carefully, map still in hand. 

"Seriously?" he asked. 

"I need to see something," she said.

"You mean you weren't just trying to get me away from the car?" Sam looked genuinely confused.

"Not only that." She spread the map out on the hood of the Buick. "Lisa doing okay back there?"

"So far, yeah. Looks kinda pissed, though."

"Crap." Charlie traced out the rectangle Sam had marked on the map. "Wait, the rest of the vics vanished from their actual homes."

"Yeeeah," Sam said.

"Lisa got attacked at the shop, which is here." She pointed to the intersection down the road from the shop, then moved her finger down roughly the amount she thought would correlate. "Well, probably more like here. Not like I've got the coordinates or anything."

"Charlie ..."

"And that makes a different shape, Sam. Though it still is the same distance, looks like."

"Charlie ..."

"And if you connect them like this"--she traced her finger over the new pattern--"what do you see?"

"I see something trying to be a circle," Lisa said from behind her. "But if you add my house back in, I see a pentagram."

"Ummm," Charlie said intelligently.

"What's really going on here, Charlie?"

"Honestly? I'm not entirely sure."

"But you're not really in town to take photos for a video game developer, are you." It wasn't a question.

"No." Charlie deflated. "Sorry. I just..."

"Needed a cover story. Right. And you?" she turned to Sam.

"And me what?"

"Are you really FBI?"

"Well, yes, but I kind of tend to get the... weird cases."

Lisa's eyebrow went up. "What, like the _X-Files_?"

"Not exactly," he said, his voice going up about half an octave. "I mean, so far, no aliens. But kind of."

Lisa's eyes narrowed, and Charlie was afraid she wasn't buying it.

"So, what do you think this is, then, some kind of ritualistic thing?"

"I think we probably shouldn't be having this conversation in the middle of the street in front of the suspicious house," Sam said, authority back in his voice. "And the two of you shouldn't be anywhere near here."

"You're probably right," Charlie admitted. 

"You know I'm right." He was fuming now. "Meet me at Gus' in half an hour."

"Why a half hour?"

"Because since there's every chance this thing's seen us, I'd better check out the house now!"

"Thing?" Lisa asked.

"Thing, guy, whatever," Sam waved his hand dismissively. "Now I've got to investigate before he makes a run for it."

Charlie winced, but she still asked, "Shouldn't you have backup?"

"Probably, but my usual backup is still on that other case, and _you_ are on witness protection duty."

Lisa visibly stiffened.

"Fine," Charlie said. "Come on, let's get out of here."

Lisa followed her back to the Gremlin and climbed in, buckling her seat belt. She waited until they turned onto Winter Street before saying, "Why don't you just take me home, Charlie? Or do I have to go where Sam says while I'm in 'witness protection'?"

"I'm sorry, Lisa," Charlie started.

"Don't. Just... I knew something wasn't right. I even thought for a hot minute that it might be cool if you had some secret identity."

_If you only knew._

"Instead I just feel like... Do you sleep with all your witnesses ~~, or just the women~~?"

"I don't... this was kind of a first." It sounded lame the second the words were out of her mouth.

Charlie took the next turn towards Lisa's house and away from Gus'. Lisa appeared to relax a little. Very little.

When they got to Lisa's house, Charlie made no move to follow her.

"Oh, are you allowed to let me out of your sight?" Lisa asked.

"Of course," Charlie said. Actually, Sam was probably going to kill her, but she really couldn't force Lisa to go somewhere she didn't want to. Didn't particularly want to either. "You're not a prisoner, Lisa."

Lisa let out a humorless laugh.

"Just... go figure this out," Lisa said. "If you want to call me after there isn't a case anymore, maybe we can talk then."

That stung, and not just because once there wasn't a case, Charlie would probably be heading back to the bunker with Sam or maybe they'd both be joining Dean to find Satan's baby-mama.

"Okay," she finally said. She bit back the desire to say something else, just repeating, "Okay."

Lisa turned and stalked into the house. It was hard to tell from the driveway, but Charlie thought it looked like she actually slammed the front door.

Charlie sighed and turned to back out and head to Gus'. She didn't want to. She'd rather keep an eye on Lisa, or at least an eye on her house. But at this point that would just be stalkery, and at least it was broad daylight. She was probably safe, at least for now.

Probably.

It only took a couple of minutes to get to Gus', so she still had about fifteen before Sam was due. Charlie wasn't in the mood to go inside and play customer just now, so she just turned off the engine and sank back into her seat.

"I hate it when a plan falls into a zillion-jillion pieces," she muttered.

~*~

Lisa stalked through her house until she got to the bedroom, then decided that was _not_ a good idea right now. Back down the stairs to the living room, and no, that wasn't going to work either. Ditto for the kitchen.

Literally every room in this house except Ben's had been part of this whole "weekend with Charlie." And Lisa was not going to go sulk like a teenager in her teenage son's bedroom.

Pacing the hallway it was, then.

Why was she even so angry? She'd kind of figured Charlie was probably undercover. She'd even thought that might be cool! But watching Charlie try to maintain her cover had just tripped some kind of a switch in Lisa's brain, and she didn't like it.

She wasn't entirely convinced by this Sam guy, either. Did the FBI really allow their agents to wear their hair long like that? And he'd seemed to be caught off guard at her _X-Files_ comment, which he should be used to if he really was the guy they gave all the weird cases to.

Something about this whole thing just stank.

_Now don't be like that. You'd think you weren't happy to see me._

She shuddered. That business about the old Mallon house being the same distance from the homes of everyone who had disappeared (and the store, for that matter) made it all extra creepy. If all five places were what counted, and it did form a pentagram, why? She knew from conversations at the shop that it was considered a protective symbol, though some said if you turned it upside-down that changed it. How could you tell which way was up on a map, then? North? Would that matter?

And what shape had Charlie seen? It just looked like three-quarters of a circle to Lisa, though that required smoothing out the lines. If she really wanted to know, she should've waited a minute to hear what she was going to say. Or gone to Gus' with her. Or invited her inside. Now she was home alone, furious for actually not a whole lot of reason, and with no idea what was going on in terms of finding this guy.

Did she want to be part of finding him? That really wasn't her kind of thing. Mellow yoga teacher here. Reasonably cool single mom. Not Nancy Drew. But the mellow yoga teacher and the reasonably cool single mom were usually the ones who ended up damsels in distress. If her option were to either swallow her pride and go catch up to Charlie so she could be actively involved versus staying here and waiting around to ever hear anything (or be attacked again), she should just grab her keys and go.

She slowed her pacing and wandered into the living room, arms crossed over her chest. She could practically see Charlie on the couch, her eyes lighting up during all the iconic scenes in the _Star Wars_ movies. Why couldn't she have been just a regular woman who wasn't only in town for a few days and not, oh by the way, also some kind of Dana Scully?

Lisa sighed and sagged against the door jamb. She was really just doing this to herself. There had been no illusions about this being anything more than a night or maybe a weekend. Sure, it had been nice having another adult around the house. Better still, having an adult around the house who enjoyed some of the things Lisa did, if maybe a little more enthusiastically. It hadn't hurt that she was pretty. And quirky. And mysterious.

She really had kind of gone back to her old type. At least they'd kept the wine to a reasonable amount. It would've sucked to forget any of the time they had enjoyed together, as had apparently been the case with Ben's father, so at least she hadn't reverted to her twenty-something self quite that badly! But considering the mysteriousness was part of her "type," could she really be mad at Charlie for actually _being_ mysterious?

She pushed herself off the door jamb and headed into the kitchen. What she really needed right now was a cup of tea so she could get her mind to settle down. If nothing else, Ben would be home in a couple of hours, and she didn't want to be distracted with all this while he was here.

Of course, it would also be nice if this were all resolved before he got back, but that was probably asking too much of the universe. She pulled out her phone to see if she'd missed any texts from him. She hadn't. She hoped that meant he was having a good time and squeezing every last minute out of the weekend before coming back.

~*~

They hadn't found their way back to the student union yet and, oh right, still didn't know anything about what was going on. Ben was about done with wandering around campus lost. If he could get his bearings and get back to the dorm, frankly he'd just as soon pack up and get ready to head home. It had been a great weekend, but it wasn't ending on a great note, and so he'd rather cut his losses. He wanted the good memories to outweigh this nonsense.

He briefly considered texting Eric and the others from home to see if they felt the same. But they were off doing whatever their tracks were doing. Sports Center and library, probably. 

Alex kept getting texts, presumably from her step-mom, but she wasn't saying anything about them. Probably nothing. It was all probably a big nothing.

That was totally why he felt like his stomach was turning itself inside-out. Damn, what a wuss he was!

Screw it. If Alex could text her mom, then so could he.

~*~

Sam hadn't found anything at the house. It really did seem to be just a random run-down house that should've been condemned. Even the basement was just old and gross, but gross like any basement could be, not like some monster's lair. He took a minute to just be mad about the dead end this had turned out to be before going to Gus' to meet Charlie and Lisa.

It had seemed so perfect. Even more so once Lisa had noticed the pattern that including both the shop and her house made. So of course it wasn't. When were things ever that easy? Not for years. Gone were the days of bizarre railroad tracks between churches marking off an iron devil's trap around a gate to hell. He hadn't thought it was possible to miss that shit, but when things got this murky, yeah, he did.

His phone buzzed. He almost didn't bother to look, figuring Charlie was getting antsy (or possibly worried) by how long he was taking. But reflex won out, and when he pulled it out of his pocket, helooked at the caller id.

"Jody?" He swiped the green phone across the screen. "Jody? Hi. What's going on?"

"Apparently, I can't send either of my kids to go look at colleges without them finding a case," Jody said.

To be fair, Claire hadn't actually been looking at colleges, but that was beside the point.

"What case? Is Alex okay?"

"Yeah, but this is weird, Sam. I mean, it sounded strange enough when they told the kids there'd been an animal attack in the theater, because hello, who has an animal inside a theater that could do any damage, am I right?"

"Well, stupid college kids, probably," Sam said. "Still, yeah, that does sound pretty suspicious."

"Know what's even more suspicious?" Jody asked. "I'll tell you what's even more suspicious: neither the coroner nor any ambulances are showing any activity."

"Did you... are you saying that you hacked their communications?"

"Well, it'd look a little weird for me to up and call from South frigging Dakota expecting an update on a case that just opened, even with my kid on campus," she replied. "So, yeah, I hacked in."

"I'm so proud of you, Jody." Sam grinned.

"Shut it, Winchester," she snapped, though he could hear the smile in her voice. "There's only so far that can get me, anyway. So, I was kind of wondering if you're any closer than I am."

"Why, what college is she checking out?"

"University of Michigan, the main campus in Ann Arbor."

Sam pulled the phone away from his face and looked at it like it might suddenly turn into a snapping turtle or something else equally absurd, then put it back to his ear. "I'm sorry, did you just say Ann Arbor, _Michigan_?"

"Yeah, and...?"

"And I'm not near Ann Arbor, but I am at least in-state." He put the phone on speaker and dropped it onto the passenger seat and started the car. "I'm on another case, but I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks, Sam," Jody said, her voice tinny through the phone's speaker. "I'll let you know if I find out anything else in the meantime."

"Don't mention it," he replied, but he had a feeling she'd already hung up. A glance confirmed the screen was dark now.

It only took him a couple of minutes to reach Gus', where he pulled up next to Charlie who was... alone.

"Where's Lisa?" he asked.

"Home," Charlie said. She looked pretty upset about that, actually, as she climbed out of the Gremlin. "Apparently finding out the chick you've been banging is FBI is the opposite of cool."

"Damn. I actually have a question or two for her." Way to go, Winchester. Super sympathetic. Still, the case was the case.

"Really? Why? What did you find?"

"At the house, nothing." He opened the door to the diner and held it for her, which got him a half-hearted glare. "It was the call as I was leaving."

"Call from who?"

"Jody. She's a..."

"The sheriff you met when Sioux Falls went all _Walking Dead_ , yeah. I didn't know you were still in touch." Charlie slid into a booth.

"Right. Thanks, Chuck," he muttered. "Anyway, yeah, lots to catch up on there. You'd like her, I think. She's kind of turned into the foster mom for a couple of kids from more recent cases."

"That's kinda cool."

A waitress came over and offered them both coffee, which they accepted and waved off menus. Once she'd gone, Sam continued.

"Yeah, it is. Thing is, one of them is away at a college thing this weekend and... isn't Ben doing one of those, too?"

"Yeah, University of Michigan." Charlie nodded.

"Ann Arbor?"

"Um, I didn't ask," Charlie said. "Kinda focused on the whole 'Lisa has the house to herself for the weekend' aspect. Why?"

"Because there's something that looks like a case up there, too," Sam said. "What if they're connected?"

Charlie sank back into her booth seat. "You think whatever it is followed Ben?"

"The attack on Lisa was Thursday, right? And he left sometime Friday?"

"Yeah, pretty much." Charlie pulled her tablet out of her bag and woke it up.

"And this attack seems to have happened sometime last night." Sam sighed. "Jody's not getting far with the unofficially official channels, but what they told the students isn't lining up with what she's not finding."

"What are they telling them?" Charlie started tapping away.

"Animal attack."

"And what isn't she finding?"

"Anything to suggest anyone was injured or killed."

Charlie stopped what she was doing and looked right at him. "But the animal attack story is usually..."

"To explain strange injuries. Right. So what the hell has them weirded out enough to pull out a story like that when nobody seems to be hurt?"

Charlie shook her head. "If it's a missing person and they're covering it up, I'm not going to find it this way."

"Which is why I was hoping Lisa could contact Ben, if he's on the same campus, and find out what he's heard."

"You do realize that's just going to freak her out even more," Charlie said. "Besides, he probably doesn't know any more than Jody's foster-kid."

"Alex," Sam supplied.

Charlie just nodded and went back to tapping. Then looked back up at Sam. "Well, he's there. High school has records of a bunch of them that went up together."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

They both just sipped at their coffee for a minute.

"So, do you think it actually followed him?" Charlie asked.

"I don't know. Maybe? It would help if we had some clue what actually happened."

Charlie let out a huff of air. She looked like she wanted to say about three different things but couldn't decide which should go first.

"I know," Sam said. "I've got to check it out, but no way we leave Lisa unprotected. Do you think there's any chance you can make nice with her?"

"I don't know." Charlie shook her head. "She was pretty done. Told me to call her when the case was done but not before."

"She might change her tune if she knew..."

"No!" Charlie looked around furtively then lowered her voice. "No. We don't know it's a case, and we don't know it's connected."

"And you think if it turns out it is, that hiding it from her will have improved things?" How was he always the one having to make this argument? He squelched the brief flash of his Stanford apartment in flames. Screw that. Yeah, he totally knew why it was always him.

"Well, probably not, but..."

Charlie's phone pinged. She pulled it out and her eyes grew wide as she read the incoming message.

"What is it?"

Charlie just turned her phone to face him.

[I know this is awkward but I have to ask. Have you heard about your kind of thing up at UMich?]

"Shit."

"Yeah."

~*~

Lisa chewed on a nail as she paced her kitchen waiting for them to come back. This couldn't be anything related, right? College kids did all kinds of stupid stuff. It might even turn out to be some kind of prank.

She was pretty sure a prank would've been over hours ago, though. Why hadn't Ben said anything sooner? She gave a mirthless laugh. Because he didn't want to worry her, obviously. When would he get over the idea he had to worry about her? It was her job to worry about him, and she thought she was doing a pretty damn good job of it right now.

When the knock at her door came, she barely looked outside to be sure it was them. She was surprised to see only Charlie, but she opened the door right away.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"Sam's already on his way to Ann Arbor," Charlie said. "Can I come in?"

"This mean you're back on witness protection duty?" Lisa tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. She didn't think she was too successful.

"If you want to call it that, sure." Charlie shrugged. "Mostly, I just didn't think you should have to be here worrying alone."

"Thanks." Lisa sighed and stepped back. "Come in."

Once Charlie was through the door, she somehow managed to get Lisa to head into the living room and sit on the couch.

"He's still been texting you, right?" Charlie asked. "And he's in contact with his other friends from town?"

Lisa nodded. She was pretty sure he'd said that. "Do you think this creep followed them? Was he waiting all night Thursday night, followed my son to school, and then followed him and his friends all the way to Ann Arbor?"

"Honestly? I don't know," Charlie said. "That's possible. I mean, I chased her... him into the woods until I lost him, but he could have doubled back to follow you home."

"He wouldn't even have to," Lisa said. "My full name is on my yoga fliers at the store. He could get my address easily enough."

"The question is why he would want to." Charlie rested her hand along the back of the couch and leaned in slightly. "There's no reason this has to actually be connected at all."

"Your partner seems convinced enough to drive an hour and a half to go check it out."

"He's thorough like that. Believe me, he's traveled further for less." Charlie gave a little lopsided smile at that.

Lisa's phone buzzed. Another message from Ben. "Well, they found the student union they were looking for, and apparently they're just going to wait for the rest of the groups to join them there for the final wrap-up."

"When's that?"

Lisa asked Ben. His reply was almost immediate.

"Another hour or so."

Charlie nodded and pulled her own phone out. She tapped out a message and set the phone down next to Lisa's on the coffee table.

"Letting Sam know where he is?"

"Yeah."

She almost asked how Sam was going to find Ben, then realized that wasn't the point. He hadn't gone there to bring Ben home. He was going there to find out if whatever was going on there was connected to the disappearances here. And to the stalker guy trying to grab her.

"I should've told Ben," she said, shaking her head. "I didn't want to worry him. He worries about me too much as it is, you know? I could just kill that guy."

"The guy who attacked you?"

"No, the guy who told Ben to look after me when we were in the hospital. He said it had been a car accident, and that he'd been the one to hit us, but that wasn't what happened. So whatever else his deal was, he was a liar. And then he went and laid that on an eleven-year-old kid. He doesn't need to be looking after me. It's my job to look after him."

"I bet you're a great mom."

Lisa shook her head, not because she wanted to disagree with what Charlie was saying, but because she felt like there was something she'd forgotten. Something important that, if she could just shake it loose, would connect the rest of the dots in this puzzle. It was right there, like something just around a corner, out of sight but casting a shadow to let you know it was there. She couldn't quite make it around that corner though.

"I'm sorry I blew up at you earlier," Lisa finally said. 

"It's okay," Charlie replied. "I kind of deserved it. Though, to be fair, I was interested in you before I knew there was a case here."

"Wait, the disappearances weren't why you came to town?"

"No. I didn't even find out about them until I read the paper at Gus' after you suggested I get breakfast there."

That did fit with how they'd met that first morning, come to think of it. "So, you really were here just for the store?"

"Kind of needed some expert advice." 

"From Brigid? I knew the FBI worked with psychics sometimes, but I didn't realize that was something she did."

"Until this week, I don't think she knew that either. But I was in the area, and she came highly recommended."

"Huh." Lisa hadn't realized the shop (or Brigid herself) was that well known. Though it was true that there weren't too many competitors in the area, so maybe that wasn't as impressive as it originally sounded. She wanted to ask just why Charlie had been in the area in the first place, but she supposed it was better not to ask things Charlie probably couldn't answer honestly. "Did you find what you needed?"

"Mostly." Charlie shrugged. "Still working on that one. This case kind of took priority."

"I'm not sure if I should say 'thank you,' 'shut up,' or just silently wish that this wasn't a case at all."

"I'm on team Wishing This Wasn't a Case, so it'd be great if you joined too," Charlie said with a lopsided smile.

"Definitely a point in that team's favor," Lisa said. 

Thing was, she wanted to believe Charlie. It had felt like there was a spark that first morning, never mind when she'd showed up for a class (pretty obviously either her first ever or at least in a really long time). She just wished she could be sure.

Sure of what? Well, that was the question. This was never going to be more than a weekend at most, so the only thing that mattered was that they’d had fun, right? Why should she care if that spark meant anything? Definitely her old self wouldn't have cared.

_Guess being a mom changed me more than I thought._

"So, what do we do now?" she finally asked. "Are we just waiting around to hear from Sam?"

"Oh, hell no," Charlie said, pulling a tablet out of her backpack. "The main reason for letting him go do the legwork is I'm better with a computer than he is."

"Oh really. Do I get to peek behind the curtain, then?"

That got a real laugh from Charlie, if a short one. "You could say that, yeah."

~*~

Sam managed to make pretty good time despite the bulk of this old clunker. Dean did keep it in reasonably good condition, even if he didn't dote on it like the Impala. Sam should probably get himself a newer vehicle, though. He'd add it to his ever-growing "to do someday, maybe" list.

When he found the theater, there was still a uniform standing guard and plenty of tape blocking the area off, but that was it. He flashed his badge, which got him an incredulous look.

"What's the FBI want with this?" Officer Reynolds asked.

"I'm friends with a couple of concerned parents," Sam admitted. Sometimes the truth worked best, as much of it as he could manage. "Their kids are here doing some kind of 'check out the university' weekend and are a little weirded out."

"Seriously?" The officer shook her head. "Should've known there was no way they'd manage to keep this hushed up."

"Care to fill me in on just what they're hushing up?" Sam asked. "Because I gotta say, between the kids and the official reports, none of this sounds like anything other than a really clumsy cover-up."

"It's one of the high school kids," she said. "He's gone missing."

Sam's heart sank. "Missing?"

"Yeah. They've been hoping maybe he'd turn up. Probably just got homesick, right?"

"But you don't think so."

"Not really, considering his car’s still on campus."

"Got something to do with why you've got this building roped off and are telling people it's a wild animal attack that somehow didn't result in any injuries?"

"That's where it gets weird," she said. "Apparently the kid was in here last night with a couple of the others he was teamed up with for the weekend."

"And they saw something," Sam said. "Something that hasn't made it into any of the reports yet."

"They can't get their story straight," she said. "Honestly? I figured they'd all tripped out."

"So … what are their stories?"

"One says he saw his stepfather—his, not the vic’s—show up and take the vic away, which makes less than no sense. Another says she saw him follow a pit bull out of the building."

"Any more?" This was definitely fitting the pattern, except why had it gone after this kid and not Ben?

"The last one's the weirdest, and if they didn't all test clean, I'd say he was proof they all took something." Reynolds took a breath and let it out as a sigh. "He saw a giant spider like the ones from Harry Potter. He was pretty specific on that point. Said it bit the kid, tossed him on its back, and carried him out of the building."

That was new: animal forms. Still, everyone saw something different, and Sam had a feeling when he looked into witness number one's stepfather, he was going to find a reason that kid would _not_ want to see him.

"Guess I see why you went with the 'wild animal' story. Protip: that works better when there are actual injuries of some kind. You got the names of these kids?" Sam asked.

Officer Reynolds nodded, pulled out a pad of paper and scribbled them down before handing them over.

"Last question," he said. At her raised eyebrow, he added, "For now. Where is the vic from?"

"Little town not too far from here," she said. "Richland."

_Of course he is._

~*~

Ben was starting to get nervous. Other groups had been filing into the lounge area that had been set up for their farewell whatever-you-called-an-assembly-when-you-weren't-in-high-school-anymore. He'd managed to get hold of most of the group he'd come with, but not Eric. He'd grabbed a seat with a view of the doorways so he could see who was coming in. All the others waved as they came in. He hadn't told any of them he hadn't been able to reach Eric, but Kim had come over and asked.

"You know what's up with Eric? He hasn't answered his texts all day."

"Yeah, I have no idea," Ben said. "Maybe he lost his phone? Or didn't charge it?"

"Maybe." Kim shrugged, looking unconvinced.

Ben didn't blame her. If anyone was permanently connected to their phone, it was Eric. If he lost his phone or let it run out of charge, that was even more reason to be ... not worried. Concerned.

Behind her, some professor or someone came into the lounge. That was kind of weird, he thought. Other than the tour of the labs and mock classes, they hadn't seen any teachers all weekend. But who else would be wearing a suit like that? Probably an art professor or something, ~~though~~ , with long hair like that. Ben didn't think that would fly in engineering or business. He didn't go up to the front where the microphone and stuff were, though. He was looking at his phone and looking at the students.

Because this day wasn't weird enough.

Apparently, he found whoever he was looking for, because he called her over and started to leave the lounge with her. On his way out the door, he looked over at Ben, and for a second Ben could swear he looked startled. He definitely slowed down for a second but then went ahead and left with the girl.

Ben was definitely ready to head home. Of course, that all depended on Eric turning up, and he still wasn't answering texts, Facebook messages, WhatsApp, nothing. He hadn't added anything to his Instagram story since last night, and that had just been a lame shot of him and his team over by the Sports Center.

"What do you think that was about?" Kim asked.

"Beats me. Maybe... wait a sec." He pulled up Instagram again. He couldn't pull Eric's story up again, but he could check out his regular posts. Nothing, nothing... there. He turned his phone to Kim. "That's her, right?"

"Yeah. That's weird."

"I'm gonna go see what's going on. Maybe they know something." He could see Kim wavering over whether to come with him. He decided to put her out of her misery. "Save our seats?"

"Sure." She sat down, looking relieved.

Ben didn't have to look far. The guy in the suit and the girl from Eric's team were sitting in one of the booths that lined the hallway connecting the lounge to the commuter cafeteria. He walked up to the table and addressed the girl, ignoring the guy.

"Hey there, you're on Eric's team, right? I saw you in some of his posts."

She looked kind of scared, which he figured anyone would that just got pulled out of a group by some random grownup, even without whatever the hell was going on.

"Mind if I join you?" He didn't bother waiting for an answer, just slid into the booth next to her, extending a hand to her. "Name's Ben. Eric's a friend of mine."

"Alice," she said, taking his hand and shaking it. "You talked to Eric at all today?"

"Me? No. Was kinda hoping you had, seeing as he's my ride home."

The guy across from them cleared his throat, so Ben turned and finally got a good look at him. He was probably about the same age as Ben's mom, more or less. Hair down just past his collar, brown. Hazel eyes, gold in the center. Really tall, even when he was sitting.

"Hi. I'm Ben. And you are?"

"Agent Page." The guy pulled a little folder out of his pocket and flipped it open. It said FBI and had the guy's picture on it.

"Agent? You mean you don't teach here?" Shit, that could not be good.

"No. So, uh, Ben, is it? You haven't heard from Eric Hendricks?"

Ben's stomach went cold and heavy. "N-no. Why? What's going on?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out. When's the last time you were in contact?"

"Directly? Sometime yesterday afternoon. He added some stuff to his Insta story last night though."

"Can you show me? Wait, no, obviously you can't. Nevermind." The agent guy pulled out his phone and tapped out a quick message. "I've got someone who can. Right, so, what was the last thing you remember him posting?"

"Something from the Sports Center," Ben said.

"That was before we went to the theater," Alice said. She looked disappointed. 

"Wait, you guys went to the theater? Does this have something to do with why they canceled stuff over there today?" Ben asked.

"I'm not at liberty to say."

So, yes."

Now the agent guy looked pissed, though it didn't last. "Yes."

"They said that was an animal attack," Ben said weakly.

"I mean, it was kinda weird," Alice said with a shudder. "I don't know how that dog got in there, but he just went to bring it outside. It didn't attack him, though. That I saw."

"Dog? Eric?" Eric wasn't really big into animals.

"Pit bull." She shuddered again.

Oh. Well, if he had a chance to show off to a girl, yeah, he could totally see Eric playing hero to get the dog out of there.

"And that's the last time you saw him?" Agent Page asked.

Alice nodded.

"And you heard your friends' stories, I take it."

"I swear, we didn't do any drugs," she blurted. "I don't know why they say they saw that other stuff. We didn't even have anything to drink! You can ask the regular cops. They checked."

"I believe you," Agent Page said with a sigh.

"What other stuff?"

"Billy said he saw his stepdad and Erla said she saw freakin' Aragog."

"The giant spider from _Chamber of Secrets_?"

Alice nodded. She looked every bit as confused as Ben felt.

"What the hell?"

"That's what I'd like to know." Agent Page pulled out a couple of business cards and handed one to each of them. "If you think of anything else, or you hear from Eric, give me a call."

Ben nodded reflexively as he took the card and set it on the table to take a picture of it.

Agent Page laughed. 

"What?" Ben asked. "I don't want to lose it."

"Fair enough." The guy shook his head at them, got up, and left.

~*~

"Ooo-kay, that's interesting," Charlie said. That wasn’t the word she wanted to use. Mostly she wasn’t sure what to call this latest development.

"What?" Lisa looked over her shoulder at her tablet, but Charlie's attention was on her phone.

"So, Sam was interviewing a witness, and Ben kind of jumped in."

"What?" Lisa asked again. 

"He didn't see anything and doesn't know anything," Charlie said, leaning back into the couch and focusing on the incoming stream of texts. "Apparently he recognized the witness from his friend's social media."

"Which friend?"

"Name's Eric." Charlie swallowed. "He's missing."

Lisa's hand went to her mouth and she paled. If she weren't already sitting down, Charlie would probably be telling her to.

"The kids he was with all have different stories." Which, of course they did.

"There were witnesses again?" 

"Yeah. And two didn't even see a person." She blinked at her phone. "Aragog? Seriously?"

" _Lord of the Rings_?"

" _Chamber of Secrets_." Charlie shook her head. "Yeah, JK cut it kinda close with that one. Anyway, if one kid saw a person, one saw a dog, and one saw a freakin' spider, then we're in a whole other level of weird."

"Were they drugged?"

"Sam says the cops couldn't find anything. Of course, some drugs clear out too fast to find, but I have a feeling that's not it." It would probably be easier if it could be a bunch of kids dropping acid their first time away from home, but Lisa probably didn’t want to hear that.

"What else could it be? Because that's kind of a lot for mass hysteria to cover."

Oh, she so didn't want to have this conversation. So she was kinda relieved when her phone rang, even if she was also kinda weirded out who it was. She excused herself to the kitchen.

"Dean, what the hell?"

"Haven't gotten an update from Sam in awhile, figured I'd try you."

Of course. Why would he tell Dean that his ex-kinda-stepkid was mixed up in all this.

"He's chasing down a lead," she said carefully.

"I figured that much. But you're not?"

"No. I'm... Do you even realize how weird this is?" She cut her eyes back to the living room.

"Preachin' to the choir, kiddo. You're with Lisa, then?"

"Yeah. Um, look, I don't know how much I can really update you right now, but Sam was just texting me a few minutes ago, so can we just go with 'he's fine' for now?"

"I guess." He huffed into the phone. "How's Lisa?"

"Okay too. Kinda weirded out, but... yeah." Might as well get this out there. "Might actually have to give her the talk."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Things are reaching a level of weird that kinda calls for it, Dean." 

"Do you have any idea how much danger you could be putting her in?"

"As opposed to _not_?” Charlie snapped. “Ignorance is not bliss, Dean, and it's obviously not insulation, either."

"Shit."

"I'm sorry." Charlie sighed. "Kinda glad I got to give you a heads-up first, actually."

"I just wanted them safe." He sounded like he was trying not to cry. Or possibly actually crying. Goddamn it.

"I know you did. We'll keep them safe."

"You too," he said. "Don't really think I can take any more hits right now."

"Your case not going well?"

"We're chasing our tails now that Dagon knows we're on their trail."

Charlie shot a glance at the door to the living room. "I know you'll find them. Gotta go now."

"Yeah, okay."

Charlie took a second to steady herself once the call ended before going back into the other room with Lisa, who looked up as she came in.

"Everything okay?"

"As okay as it can be," Charlie said. "Different case, actually."

"Exactly how many jobs do you have?"

Charlie laughed. "Too many most days."

"Does one of those jobs involve telling me how the hell those kids could each see something totally different, including giant spiders, without drugs?"

Charlie sighed. Yep. Time for The Talk. "Yeah. Look, it's pretty obvious that things about this case are weird."

"That's putting it mildly." Lisa narrowed her eyes.

"Right. So, remember back in the shop parking lot, when you saw a guy and I saw a woman?"

"Kinda hard to forget."

"The woman I thought I saw was a witch."

Charlie waited a beat for a reaction.

"And?"

Not that reaction.

"Not a Wiccan,” she clarified. “A witch. The kind who makes deals with demons for their power. Well, most of them. I don't know about Rowena specifically."

"You're serious."

"Unfortunately." Charlie gave that a second to sink in before continuing. "At first, I thought she'd used some sort of glamour spell that I was seeing through, and that was why you saw someone else."

"But you don't think that anymore."

"We confirmed she was nowhere near here." Charlie spread her hands, "Plus she really wouldn't have had any motivation."

"So, now your theory is...?"

"Something that looks like different things to different people," Charlie said. "It might be based on a fear, hence the giant spider that one kid saw. But Rowena's not exactly a fear for me."

"And I didn't even know the guy I saw." Lisa crossed her arms over her chest. "You guys really are the _X-Files_."

"Not exactly." If she was telling the truth, she might as well tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. "We kind of tackle the stuff that's too weird for the regular police and FBI." Did that sound as bad out loud as it did in her head? Probably, to go by Lisa's expression.

"So, you're what, vigilantes?"

"I guess that's one word for it," Charlie admitted. "Mostly we just call ourselves hunters."

Lisa shook her head. "Let's say I believe all this, which I'm not sure I do. Then let's get back to what the hell happened to my son's friend. Is this the same thing we saw?"

"Maybe." Charlie sighed. "We can't know for sure, but Sam thinks it may have followed them out there."

"And if it changes form based on the person, why would I see someone I didn't know?"

"A better question would be how it came up with that face at all," Charlie said. She debated for a moment, then swiped her phone open and brought up her contacts. Then turned the phone to face Lisa. "Is this the guy you saw?"

Lisa visibly recoiled. So that was a yes.

"How do you have his picture?" she demanded.

"He's a fellow hunter," Charlie said. 

"And his name's Dean? That's what the guy outside the shop said, too."

"Meanwhile, the real Dean was actually in Idaho," Charlie said. _Good thing he actually had a solid alibi._

"Why would it pick him to be?" Lisa asked. The look in her eyes suggested she might be getting at least a hint of an idea.

"You used to know him," Charlie said. "You... actually lived with him for awhile."

Lisa recoiled and shook her head. "No. I couldn't forget someone I lived with."

"Are you sure?" Charlie asked gently. "Is there maybe a part of your life that's kind of... blurry?"

Lisa's eyes glistened. "There was... first they were talking about a car accident, but then they said it was a home invasion. Ben and I both... I had all kinds of injuries, so it was no big surprise my memory was trashed. But it never made sense for Ben. What... how...?"

"I'm not going to defend him, 'cause I really don’t agree with his decision, but Dean thought the two of you would be safer if you didn't remember he existed or any of what you'd seen." Charlie held her breath.

"How?"

"I'm going to keep it simple and say 'magic,' for now," Charlie said, hoping Lisa would go for it. "You've kind of got a lot to digest already as it is."

"So, hunters go around obliviating people?" Lisa asked.

"No. I don't know if any human has that kind of power. Well, I guess some witches might." Witches with the _Book of the Damned_ almost certainly did, but this one wasn’t on Rowena.

"Then what?"

"You sure you want to know?"

"How much worse can it be?"

Charlie wasn't sure how much worse this would qualify as. "He asked an angel to do it."

"An angel." Lisa’s eyes were wider than Charlie had yet seen them.

"They're... not exactly what most people think," Charlie said. "I've met this one, though. He tries to do the right thing."

"Erasing people's memories is the right thing?"

"I didn't mean that." Charlie shook her head rapidly. " _Tries_ to. Doesn't always get it right. Frequently gets it spectacularly wrong. Like most of us, I guess, just, being an angel, it kind of scales up."

Lisa hugged herself and burrowed back into the couch cushions like she was trying to put as much distance between herself and Charlie as possible. Charlie felt like she’d just been punched in the gut, but she completely got it. It just sucked.

Charlie tried to remember what she could of that book. The one that introduced Lisa. Would Castiel have erased all of that, too? Would he have known to? It was worth a shot.

"Do you remember something weird happening before?" Charlie asked. "Around Ben's eighth birthday?"

Lisa squinted like she was trying to physically look into her memories. "I think there was something... a bunch of accidents in the neighborhood."

Charlie gave her a minute to work through it and see if she could get there on her own.

"Sherry really took it hard when her ex-husband died. He didn't even live in the neighborhood anymore. Does that count?"

"It does if you think it does," Charlie said.

Lisa closed her eyes. "She said she didn't think Katie was her daughter. I thought it was just grief. But then the next day... Ben wasn't Ben." Her eyes shot open, horror written deep in them.

"It was a changeling," Charlie said quietly.

"He went up in flames. And then... I don't know how Ben got home, but he was okay."

So Cas had erased the brothers but not the incident. Charlie wondered if that was deliberate.

"Dean and Sam rescued him," Charlie said. "I think it was another couple of years later that Dean moved in with you, after Sam died."

"Sam... died? The Sam who sat in my kitchen this morning?"

"Um, yeah." Shit, she hadn't meant to go down that road. "Didn't take."

"Clearly." Now Lisa was looking at her like she was insane. "So, that's not just some horrible nightmare? Some monster replaced Ben?"

"And all the rest of the kids in the neighborhood," Charlie said. "Sam and Dean found the real kids and the main changeling. Killing the adult took care of the rest. I hear Ben was actually a huge help getting the rest of the kids out."

"That sounds like him." Lisa sighed. "I thought that was just..."

"Your mind playing tricks on you, coughing up the worst thing you could think of," Charlie said. She sent out a silent prayer in Castiel's direction thanking him for leaving at least that one memory, even though he took the Winchesters out of it. It might or might not have been deliberate, but it was turning out to be a good thing.

"Yeah." She buried her face in her hands for a second, then looked back up. "I've been thinking all this time that I had some kind of brain damage. They told me I didn't, but then they couldn't explain the amnesia."

Charlie's phone pinged. When she swiped the text, it was from Dean.

[Cas says you're welcome?]

Yeah, she wasn't explaining that now. Cas could fill in the blanks or not. She was still mostly pissed at the both of them for screwing with Lisa's head that way. How could she _not_ end up messed up by it?

"And you're all friends."

"Yeah." Charlie waited a beat, then added, "That doesn't mean I agree with everything they do. Or vice versa for that matter."

"So you've said." Lisa stood up and walked over to the bookshelf that held the DVDs and VHS tapes. She stared at it for a minute, then turned to face Charlie again. "How much of this did you know before Friday?"

"None," Charlie said, holding her hands up. "I mean, I sort of knew the changeling thing, but not that that was _you_."

She was absolutely, positively, not explaining the _Supernatural_ books right now. Or preferably ever. Shit, what if she or Ben had ever run across them on their own?

_Bad plan in so, so many ways, Dean._

"When did you find out?"

"Saturday morning. Same time as I found out what you'd seen looked like Dean."

"I still don't feel like that picture looked like him." Lisa shook her head. "More magic?"

"Possibly."

"Can it be fixed?" Lisa squared her shoulders and set her jaw.

"What?"

"What that angel did to my memory. Can it be fixed? Can he undo it?" Lisa asked.

Charlie closed her eyes and thought the question at Castiel, opening her eyes when her phone pinged.

[Cas says yes, he can reverse the memory wipe. But Charlie, there is shit she should not have to remember!]

[You think walking around thinking she has brain damage is preferable?] 

Charlie stabbed the send button at the end of that one. She didn't want to add to the long list of things Dean was forever beating himself up for, but seriously, this was a really shitty decision he'd made. It was full of holes and consequences, and it pissed her off.

No reply came for that. No surprise there. 

"He says he can," she said at last. "I think he'd have to be here to do that though."

"Can't he just fly here and do it?"

"Short version: no, angels can't fly. Anymore." Good grief, there was no way this conversation could handle all that. "But he can drive. Once the case he and Dean are on is taken care of, I'll ask him to come here."

Meanwhile, Charlie really wanted to go over to Lisa and give her a hug. She looked like she needed one. More than that, she looked like she probably needed a shoulder to cry on. Charlie just wasn't sure Lisa would welcome either of those from _her_ right now.

"This is a lot to take in," Lisa finally said. "I mean, a lot."

"Believe me, I know. I thought it was all impossible until I actually saw a monster in action."

Lisa shot her a look.

"So, I was at work, and I went to find my boss. He'd gone out for a smoke break, like he always did, even though we weren't allowed to. Anyway, I saw this other guy turn into him in front of me, then he just..." Charlie shuddered. "... ate him."

Lisa looked like she was going to be sick. Charlie could relate. She could hardly ~~kind of couldn’t~~ believe she hadn’t puked her guts up at the time.

"I kinda ran."

Lisa nodded weakly, then said, "So is that the same kind of thing we're dealing with here?"

"Not likely," Charlie said, a faint sense of relief sweeping through her. "Leviathan have been pretty scarce since Sam and Dean took down Dick Roman. With my help. Besides, they were definitely more about just eating people."

"I so did not need to know that." Lisa walked back towards the couch, then turned and went back to the bookshelf. "Wait, Dick Roman? That's why he disappeared? They... killed him?"

"Sent him to Purgatory, actually. Not the real Dick Roman. He was already dead, I guess."

"Purgatory's real?"

"Kinda? Not the way they talk about it in Sunday School, though. Do they even talk about it in Sunday School?" Charlie hadn't really been big on Sunday School before her parents died, and definitely not after.

"I have no idea." Lisa shook her head. "But if you can send monsters there, I'm guessing it's not like heaven's penalty box or whatever."

"Yeah, no. Far as I can tell, humans go directly up or down. Or get stuck in the veil. There's probably other options. But Purgatory actively does not like having humans there."

"I'm not even going to ask how you know that." Lisa held up her hands.

"That's probably best." 

It felt like they'd turned a corner sometime around when Lisa had talked about the case as something they were dealing with together. Charlie still felt like she needed to tread lightly, but Lisa seemed to be shifting gears from freaking out to tackling the problem. There was some serious steel in this woman's spine. Charlie could totally understand why Dean had tried to make something work with her.

_Don't get any bright ideas. The operative word is tried. It didn't work. It failed so hard that_ obliviating _her seemed like a valid choice._

"I have no idea what the next step is here," Lisa said. "Part of me wants to tell you to leave again. Let me forget all this. But Ben's in danger, and I can't pretend I don't know what's going on if it affects him."

Charlie just nodded.

"Part of me wants to demand every little detail, but that's probably not a great idea, considering." Lisa took a breath and let it out slowly. "Mostly, I want to know what I can do to help find this thing so it can't hurt Ben."

"I don't have a good answer yet," Charlie said. "But you're welcome to help me look for one."

Lisa nodded slowly, then more decisively. "Good. Show me how."

~*~

Learning to navigate the databases Charlie introduced her to was helping Lisa stay grounded, she decided. The fact that said databases were all about monsters that supposedly actually existed, however, was doing the opposite of distracting her from everything she’d just learned. Also, Charlie had already been all over these, so despite assurances that “fresh eyes can turn up new leads,” Lisa didn’t actually feel all that useful. At the moment, however, she’d settle for grounded.

_I dwell in the present moment. Observe what is and don’t pass judgment on it. Right._

Monsters were real. So were angels, and they could and did mess with people’s minds. She’d lived with a guy for a year and didn’t remember anything about him. Oh, and she’d slept with someone who was apparently a real-life version of Willow Rosenberg minus the witch thing. Unless she just hadn’t told her that part yet.

Lisa wondered if the fact she was accepting all of this so easily was because she’d known most of it before. Alternately, she really was having some kind of psychotic break. More than one therapist had told her over the years that if she was questioning her sanity, then she wasn’t losing it. She really hoped they were right.

Of course, she could still be well on her way to an anxiety attack if the way her heart was trying to pound its way out of her chest was any indication.

Closing her eyes against the gruesome pictures on her tablet, Lisa breathed in slowly, belly-lungs-collarbones, and out just as slowly, collarbones-lungs-belly. The familiar pattern was reassuring in itself, and her heartbeat slowed with each breath. She could freak out later, after all. Right now, Ben was in trouble, and she had to do whatever she could to protect him.

She opened her eyes and looked at the picture of the werewolf on her screen, the body beside it showing a gaping hole where it’s heart used to be. Not something that was likely to be involved, especially with a couple of days until the full moon, but something she needed to get used to sharing her world with. They existed. Silver really was their Achilles heel. That was enough to file away for now.

Lisa tapped the screen and moved to the next category. Even if whatever they’d seen was no more likely to be a skinwalker than a werewolf, even if she didn’t learn anything to help protect Ben now, even if this was just a way to keep her out of Charlie’s hair while she did the real work, Lisa could learn as much as possible about this stuff, she decided. Because Charlie was still leaving in a couple of days, and Lisa needed to know how to protect herself and Ben when it was just them. Once this was all over, which it would be. 

Besides, maybe she _would_ find something useful. Her eyes couldn’t get much fresher than “didn’t know this stuff existed until fifteen minutes ago.” So, yeah, she could freak out later. For now, she’d focus on the task at hand.

_I dwell in the present moment._

That had never felt more important to believe.


	7. Chapter 7

"If this is the same thing," Charlie said, "then it's changed its m.o. Up till now it's been caregivers of kids."

The phone sat on the coffee table like the apex of a triangle that had Charlie and Lisa holding down the other two corners. Really distant corners.

"Emily Dillard, pediatric nurse," Sam read off. "Kathy Torres, soccer coach. Matt Noble, history teacher. And Janice Waller, guidance counselor."

"Wait, Janice?" Lisa asked. "Since when is Janice missing?"

"Wednesday," Charlie said.

"You know her?" Sam asked.

"She's one of my students. I should've known something was wrong when she wasn't in class Thursday." Lisa raked her fingers through her hair. "Charlie, when you asked if I knew all of them, I couldn't imagine how that would make any difference. This town is small enough that everyone knows everyone else."

"Riiight."

"But what if I am the connection?"

"How do you know the other victims?" Sam asked.

Lisa looked shaken at having to think of them in those terms, but she answered, "Emily used to come to the yoga classes I teach over at the hospital before they canceled the staff class. She even kept coming to the pregnancy class for a little while."

"And the others?"

"Kathy was Ben's soccer coach last fall. Matt's his teacher." Lisa shuddered. "What if the connection isn't me? What if it's Ben?"

"What would the connection to the nurse be?" Sam asked. "I mean, I assume Janice is his guidance counselor."

"She is. Was. Is." Lisa drew a ragged breath. "I don't think he's ever met Emily though."

"It's not much go to on," Charlie said. "But that is more connection between all of them than we had."

"Eric's the one who drove them there," Lisa said. "His mother's going to be more of a wreck than I am. How are they going to get back?"

"I can work on that," Sam said. "I'll follow them back, just to be safe."

"Thank you." Lisa looked like she wanted to cry.

Charlie couldn't blame her. This was way too much for anyone to have to process all at once. Charlie wanted to lean across and hug her, but she still wasn't sure that was what Lisa needed.

"What's our next move here?" Charlie asked. "We've kind of run dry in searching the lore online."

She needed something to do. _Lisa_ needed something to do. They'd both go crazy just sitting here.

"Closest thing still a qareen?"

"Yeah, but close only works in horseshoes and hand grenades," Charlie replied. "The m.o. is all wrong. They don't _take_ people, just rip their hearts out."

"We've run into different sub-species before," Sam pointed out. "Djinn who prefer their victims scared instead of happy, for instance."

"True. But that's just... taste." Charlie shivered a little. "They still had the same ultimate goal."

"This thing might too," Sam said, "but the good news is that they're all still _missing_."

"How is that good news?" Lisa asked.

"Missing is better than dead," Charlie said softly. "Missing means there's a chance of getting them back."

"Oh."

Charlie hoped there was a real chance of getting them back, not just a theoretical one. They weren't usually that lucky, but there was no reason to tell Lisa that. She was worried enough.

"I'd say keep hitting the lore, but if you're saying you've scraped the net dry..."

"I'd never say that," Charlie said. "But we're running out of credible-looking sources."

She supposed they could try looking at the incredible-looking sources, but considering most of them seemed to be somewhere between flat-earther and tin-hatter, she wasn't holding out much hope for finding anything useful there.

"All that means is any information that exists on this thing is either too new or too old," Sam said.

"Or exists in another dimension," Charlie muttered.

"What?" Lisa asked.

Oh crap. Had she said that out loud?

"I thought we'd agreed there was no connection there," Sam said.

"It's never two things, Sam." Charlie sighed. "I can't make it make sense either, but... yeah. And now I've got more 'splaining to do."

"Yeah, you do. Lisa, I'm sorry you're getting such a crash course in all this."

"Thanks, Sam, but from what I understand, it's your brother who needs to apologize."

"No argument there." Sam ended the call.

"So," Lisa said, looking resigned, "now other dimensions are a thing?"

"Way too many things are things," Charlie said.

"And the something that may or may not be connected to all this?"

Charlie closed her eyes and swallowed. "How I turned up alive in Michigan four days ago when I died just about two years ago in Kansas."

When she opened her eyes and warily looked over, Lisa's eyebrows were raised, but she didn't look ready to throw her out again. That was progress, Charlie supposed.

"Four days ago, as in the morning I first met you," Lisa said.

"I'd heard a while back that particular shop could be a good resource, so when I woke up in Benton Harbor, that's where I headed."

"Does that mean Brigid knows about this stuff?"

Charlie nodded. "On the plus side? The shop itself is really, really well warded."

"Obviously that doesn't do much for the parking lot," Lisa said with a scoff.

"Yeah, harder to keep open spaces warded." Charlie decided not to add that she didn't know how much good Brigid's wards would be against whatever-this-was. If they didn't know what it was, they had no way of knowing what would repel it. Or kill it. Or anything. She could also pretty much see that light bulb going off over Lisa's head.

"So, if Brigid knows about this stuff, and we're coming up empty figuring out what the hell this thing is, why are we not asking her what she knows?" Lisa asked.

Oh. Different light bulb.

"That... is a very good question. I'm guessing you've got her number?"

Charlie mentally crossed her fingers as Lisa rolled her eyes and pulled out her phone.

~*~

It didn't take Sam long to find Ben when the students were dismissed back to pack up and get out of the dorms they'd used for the weekend. It helped that the kid came right to him.

"You find Eric yet?" he asked.

"No," Sam admitted. "No, we haven't. But, I did talk to your mom. She said he was your ride back?"

"Yeah, he drove all of us here. So what?"

"So, since it looks like we may not find him right away, she asked me to make sure you and your friends get home okay."

"Sam? What are you doing here?" a familiar voice asked.

He turned to see Alex standing there looking worried.

"Jody called me," he said. "I was already in-state, so I told her I’d come check out whatever’s going on here."

"Dude, I’m here checking out this university to see if I want to apply here," she said. "I was pretty sure I did, but depending on what you find here, maybe not so much."

"You know each other?" Ben asked.

"Okay, time for that later," Sam said. "Right. So, you're all supposed to be packing up and leaving, right? You got a plane to catch, Alex?"

"I drove," Alex said.

"You... from South Dakota?"

"Are _you_ seriously going to lecture me about interstate driving?" Alex demanded.

"Dude, who even _are_ you?" Ben added. " ~~Because I'm thinking it's kinda weird you know a bunch of high school kids from totally different parts of the country."~~

" ~~You're telling me," Sam muttered. "Two of you don’t make a bunch.~~ Look, for now, how about you do exactly what you're supposed to be doing, but then meet back here once you're all packed up. Ben, bring the rest of the kids you came with, too."

"And if we don't?" he asked.

"Then you get to find your own way home," Sam said. "Look, call your mom. She'll confirm this is legit."

He could see the questions continuing to pile up in all of their eyes, especially Ben's.

"Meanwhile, I'll call Jody, see if she has any info that might help find Eric." Calling that kid's mom was definitely not something Sam wanted to have to do. He'd gladly leave that to the real cops.

Ben nodded grudgingly and turned to leave, already tapping at his phone and shooting looks back over his shoulder every so often.

“What is it?” Alex asked.

"We don't know," Sam admitted. "This started before this weekend, and it seems to be focusing on people from a particular town, and no, that town is not Ann Arbor."

"It's Ben's town," Alex said. "So, he's the one in danger."

"Yeah." Sam ran his fingers through his hair. “Him and his friends.”

Alex squared her shoulders. "Then we'll figure this out."

Sam smiled. "Yeah. We will."

~*~

Lisa was impressed that her hands didn't shake as she pulled up Brigid's contact information and called her. No sooner had she tapped the call icon than she questioned whether she should've texted first. She supposed if it was a bad time, though, Brigid would either not answer or would just tell her she couldn't talk.

She really, really hoped it wasn't a bad time for Brigid.

"Hello?"

"Hi, it's me."

"Yeah, I got that from caller id. Everything okay?" Brigid asked.

"Um, not really. I, uh, we kind of need your expertise."

"Shit, Lis. What did Charlie get you into?"

"I'm going to put you on speaker," Lisa said, tapping the icon and setting the phone on the coffee table.

"Good," Brigid's voice came through tinny and sharp. "Then I can yell at her myself. Charlie, I warned you..."

Brigid had warned her? About what?

"I know you did," Charlie cut in, "and you can hex me later. Right now, yes, I brought Lisa up to speed as much as I can, and we need to figure out what in the world is going on and how to fix it."

"This still about that witch you were asking about?"

"Believe it or not, she has an alibi," Charlie said.

"From what you said about her, that's probably a good thing," Brigid said. "But then why did you and Lisa see such different things?"

"It seems like this thing shows different illusions to different people," Lisa said. "Brigid, it followed Ben out to Ann Arbor and now his friend is missing."

"Wait, is that where you are?"

"No, no. I'm home." Should she head there? Every instinct Lisa had screamed yes, but if Sam was bringing him home, then that didn't make sense.

"A friend of mine is out there," Charlie said. "He's going to make sure Ben and the rest of the kids get home."

"You put some other hunter on this?"

"Since I can't exactly beam there and back or clone myself, yeah. He's one of the best hunters I know. Better than me, definitely."

"What is it you think I can help with?"

"For starters," Charlie said, "have you ever heard of anything that creates custom illusions, including two different ones at the same time?"

"That's... no, I haven't. Not from this realm anyway."

"What does that mean, 'from this realm'?" Lisa asked. "Is this more of that dimension stuff?"

"She means that the leading theory on how I'm even here is that I got sucked into one of the fairy realms," Charlie said. "I definitely haven't seen everything in Oz, but I also definitely never ran into anything that could do this."

"Oz?" Every time Lisa thought this couldn't get any weirder, it did.

"Right. Oz is real. The books aren't completely accurate, but yeah. It's a thing. The wizard's a real d-bag, or at least he was."

Of course he was.

"And that's just one of the fairy realms."

"Do I want to know how many there are?" Lisa asked.

"Probably not, but that's okay, because nobody knows," Brigid replied. "Charlie, whatever this is, maybe it brought you here from wherever you were."

"But then why did the disappearances start before I got here?"

"Time isn't that neat. You should know that. It's not linear, even though we usually see it that way."

"Oh, frak. So, what, this thing got tangled in a ball of timey-wimey and got here first?"

"Or you got tangled and that's why you got here later."

Lisa was pretty sure she was going to have a migraine by the end of this conversation.

"But why would it be kidnapping people?" Charlie asked. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad not to have a string of bodies to follow, but that would actually make more sense."

"I have no idea. Did you get the dream root?"

"Yee-ah."

Dream root?

"Maybe it'd be worth giving the ritual a try even though it's a couple days till the full moon," Brigid said. "That's still your best bet for getting answers."

"Would you be able to tell anything from the aura of someone who's seen this thing?" Charlie asked.

"Maybe. Not Lisa, though. I'm guessing you've been together enough that any fairy realm energy in her aura is probably from you."

"You're guessing correctly." Charlie sighed. "I don't think Ben or any of the kids in his group saw it."

"And you're sure it's the same thing?"

"Some other kids saw Eric, that's the one who went missing, leave with one of their step-dads, a pit bull, and a giant spider. Simultaneously, just in case that wasn't clear."

"Sounds like it then. And not just humanoid projections. This definitely feels like fairy magic."

"This is insane," Lisa said.

"I know," Charlie replied.

"That thing that switched with Ben when he was eight," Lisa said. "Changeling, right? Aren't they from fairy realms too?"

"Not exactly," Brigid said. "Wait, what do you mean when he was eight he got switched with a changeling?"

"That happened," Charlie said. "My friend who went to Ann Arbor was one of the hunters that rescued the kids. So, what's 'not exactly' mean?"

"It means people have blamed the fae for changelings for centuries," Brigid replied. "There's never been any proof they're from anywhere but here though."

"But they could be," Lisa pressed. She felt like she was right at the doorway to something, but she couldn't tell what.

"They could... what are you thinking?" Brigid asked.

"What if they're trying to get him back?" An iron bar knotted itself around Lisa's heart. "What if he's what this thing's been after all along?"

"Why would you think that?"

"Three of the other, well now four of the other missing people were connected to Ben," Charlie said. "Soccer coach, guidance counselor, history teacher. Now buddy."

"What about the nurse?"

Abruptly, Charlie's fingers flew across her tablet's keyboard. Then suddenly, they stopped. Charlie looked like she'd seen a ghost.

"I should've checked before. Lisa, Emily's been filling in as school nurse while the regular one is out on maternity. At Ben's school."

"Oh shit."

"It could be? I mean, if something just came along for the ride with you, Charlie, maybe it picked up on the fact there was someone who was freed from the changelings nearby, and it's trying to fix that?"

"Doesn't quite track," Charlie said, "but it's better than we've had up till now. Would that mean it was a changeling? Because I'm fresh out of blowtorches."

"Blowtorch?" As soon as the word was out of her mouth, Lisa flashed back to her dream, with the robotic monster Ben going up in flames before her eyes. She shuddered.

"Not necessarily," Brigid said. "I'd say we're getting out of my area of expertise, but I'm pretty sure we left that behind five minutes into this conversation."

"So, what do you think bumping up the ritual would get us?" Charlie asked. "And can we even do it without the full moon?"

"It might not be as effective," Brigid said, "but it kinda sounds like time is a thing here. Did you get enough to do it twice if you need to?"

"Maybe? Kinda not all that sure how much I'll need."

"Not much. Just enough to anoint the mirror. And anything we can get for info would be better than spinning our wheels like this."

"The thing is, there were other kids taken and freed at the same time as Ben," Charlie said.

How did Charlie know so much about that? The way she'd told it, she wasn't there for it, but it sounded like she had been.

"Do they live nearby?" Brigid asked.

"I haven't kept in touch with anyone from when we lived in Indiana," Lisa said. "No one but family, anyway."

"Do you remember the kids' names that Ben was friends with back then?" Charlie asked. "Because that's something I can try to follow up. See if anything like this is going on around them."

"If there's just the one thing, it might not be able to handle more than one at a time," Brigid pointed out. "Besides, it seems to not be really clear on who/what it's after."

"I'm liking this theory, though," Charlie said. "Changelings take their time with their victims. We could get everyone back."

"Would that still make the Mallon house the most likely place to find them?" Lisa asked. She wasn't sure she agreed that this was the best theory, at least in terms of actually liking it. If it meant everyone could be saved, which Charlie seemed to think would be unusual, then great. But it would also mean that Ben was the main target.

"The old Mallon house? Why? Creepy and haunted-looking isn't necessarily what they go for."

"It's equidistant from the houses of everyone we know it's gone after plus the store," Charlie said. "Though we haven't factored in Eric."

Charlie pulled up a map of the town on her tablet that had the same houses marked as had been on Sam's paper map.

"But does it make sense to mark his house or UMich?" Lisa asked. "The only reason the store factors in is because that's where it tried to grab me.”

"True." Charlie zoomed out and put a pin marker on Ann Arbor, which removed anything resembling a pattern. Then she zoomed back into the town's street map. "But let's see about Eric's house."

Lisa pointed it out. It was in a completely different part of town, so that didn't fit either. "Maybe that doesn't matter. It kind of went out of its pattern following them to Ann Arbor. Which, how would it even do that?"

"If it's picking up on some kind of energy pattern, it might just follow along like a bloodhound," Charlie said.

"I so didn't need that image."

"Sorry."

"I think we're back to trying to see if we're even right about where you've been and where it came from," Brigid said. "Do you have all the ingredients there with you?"

"Yeah," Charlie said.

She didn't sound like she wanted to do this. Why? Was she afraid she'd have to go back to wherever it was in order to get the other people back? Lisa wasn't crazy about that possibility either, but if that's what they needed to do, it's what they needed to do.

"I'll come there to walk you through it," Brigid said. "The spell won't be as powerful without the energy of the full moon, but hopefully we're close enough to see _something_. And I have an idea or two to boost it. I'll swing by the store for a thing or two."

"I'll see you when you get here," Lisa said and ended the call.

When she looked back up from the phone to Charlie, she was fishing in her bag for something until she came up with keys.

"Most of the stuff is in my trunk," she said. "I'll be right back with it."

The way she scurried out of the house, Lisa would've thought she was going to make a break for it if not for the fact she left her bag sitting by the couch. Why the hell would she think that? Why did Charlie suddenly seem so scared?

What the hell was actually going on?

~*~

"This really FBI procedure?" Ben asked as the other kids put their stuff in the back of the Buick.

"Not really," Sam said. He hoped the kid didn't push it. Bad enough Alex had nearly blown his cover. "But it's the best I can do on short notice, and we need to get you kids home."

"What if Eric comes back?" one of the others asked.

"We're going to find him and get him home," Sam said. "In the meantime, we need to get the rest of you home."

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

"Don't go anywhere." He pointed at Ben. "Nobody else is going missing today."

He took went over to the Buick and answered the call as he got inside. "Jody, hi."

"What the hell is going on out there, Sam?" Jody asked.

"Still trying to figure it out," Sam said. "Charlie's working a lead from where she is. It looks like this thing might be after Ben. Or at least, everyone who's been taken has some kind of connection to him."

"Alex is completely freaked out," Jody said. "She couldn't even go check out a totally boring university without this crap happening?"

"Yeah, no, I hear you, Jody." Sam ran his fingers through his hair. "Bright side? It doesn't seem like this thing has any interest in her."

"That we know of, and now she’s been in a team with this kid, Ben, all weekend," Jody said.

"Shit."

"Oh, now you put it together. Sam, I know you said you're driving Ben home..."

"But Alex has her own car,” Sam finished.

"True." Jody sighed. "How do we keep them all safe, Sam? Alex is driving back here by herself, which I was worried about anyway, but now?”

"There were other kids on Ben's team too," Sam said, "but this thing went after the kid he's been friends with for years. A kid who wasn't on his team this weekend."

"Does that actually mean anything?"

"I wish I knew."

"So far everyone's been from that one town?"

"Yeah. So far."

"Still kinda want to tell Alex to stick with you."

"As far as I know, Garth's still in Wisconsin," Sam said. "Alex could stick with us as far as Richland. That might actually work better for getting the rest of the kids back. We could split them between the two cars. Then maybe Garth could meet up with us and escort her the rest of the way. But Jody, that plan might actually put her in _more_ danger, not less."

"I know, I know." Jody huffed into the microphone. "Can we go with that for now, at least until we come up with something better?"

"I guess."

Sam scrubbed a hand over his face. This was getting more convoluted every step of the way. When he looked back out the window, he saw Alex pulling up beside him. He rolled down his window. "What are you doing here?"

Alex picked up her phone, which started to ring almost immediately. "This is what Jody's gonna tell me to do, right?"

Sam shook his head and let her go ahead and answer it. Did these kids even need him? Truth to tell, he hoped not. If nothing else, it should be harder to pick them off in a group. He ignored the voice in his head pointing out that Eric had been with a bunch of friends when he'd walked right off with this whatever-it-was.

~*~

Charlie looked at the materials she had strewn across Lisa's coffee table: black mirror, African dream root, mugwort, bay oil, and a soup bowl to mix it in. The instructions were easy enough: a pinch of each in the bay oil, then use them to anoint the mirror. She wasn't sure what else Brigid was bringing, so she didn't want to start without her. Whatever she was bringing might alter the proportions, not that they seemed too exact.

Lisa was alternating between pacing, putting tea on, staring out the window, and shooting furtive looks in Charlie's direction. It was kind of unnerving. But Charlie wasn't about to ask her what she was thinking. She remembered what this felt like, just finding out all this crap while you were smack in the middle of it. And unlike her, Lisa didn't really have a choice. Well, she did, but she clearly wasn't going to cut and run without Ben.

Whether she was going to ever speak to Charlie again once this was over was a different question, and one that Charlie was trying to convince herself was irrelevant. Just because this "weekend thing" had turned into a "foxhole thing," that didn't mean it actually meant any more than it had two days ago. If anything, it was all the more reason Charlie should plan to stay as far away from Lisa as possible, because if their latest theory was even kind of right, then this whole mess was at least kind of Charlie's fault. (Which did _not_ mean anyone needed to be messing with Lisa's mind again, because what the actual fuck, Dean? But she did grok the "get out of Dodge and keep them safe" thing, at least.)

The doorbell startled her so that she knocked over the little bottle of bay oil. Good thing she hadn't uncapped it yet.

Brigid stormed into the living room and let her fringed leather bag slide from her shoulder to the floor as she knelt next to the coffee table in a single fluid movement. Out of it, she pulled a little bottle that looked just like the bottle of bay oil Charlie had bought from her, a silky-looking pouch that sounded like it had rocks in it (runes maybe?), and a little book with a worn-out cover that used to have something that might have been a tree embossed on the cover. Finally, she produced a little silver bowl that she put in the middle of everything, setting the soup bowl aside. Only when all of these were arranged to her satisfaction did Brigid look up at Charlie, eyes narrowed.

"You still have enough fae energy on you. It's definitely less, though. Might be just as well not to wait for the full moon. Hoping this will give us the boost we need." Brigid picked up the little bottle that Charlie could now see was labeled "moonstone extract."

"How do you extract moonstones?" Charlie asked. "I'm thinking not so much like blueberries."

"Really not." Brigid rolled her eyes. "Actual moonstones in either oil or distilled water, set out under the light of the full moon. Some people add other stuff, but this brand keeps it simple."

Lisa came in with three mugs of tea that smelled citrusy. She set one down on each end of the coffee table and kept the third. "No caffeine or spices, as requested."

"Is that part of the spell?" Charlie asked.

"It's part of keeping hydrated and energized in case this takes awhile, but without anything to interfere with the scrying." Brigid dumped little white stones from the silky bag into the little silver bowl with about half of the bay oil. She added a big pinch of the mugwort and a smaller one of the shreds of African dream root. Over it all she sprinkled some of the moonstone extract, which beaded up in the bay oil like vinegar in salad dressing.

Lisa sat at the far end of the couch, holding her mug close as if to warm her hands. She looked pale, and Charlie wondered if she was going into shock.

Brigid opened the little book and thumbed through the pages, going forward and back a couple of times until she found what she was looking for. She looked up again, first at Lisa, then at Charlie. "Can you read Sumerian?"

Charlie shuddered. "Not exactly. Why not just use the Celtic spell you gave me? I thought they had more to do with the fairies than any other culture."

"Common misconception," Brigid said with a wave of her hand. "Other cultures just spoke of them differently. And the Sumerians actually did quite a lot of work with seeing into other realms. But if you're not sure of the pronunciation, you could end up summoning something even worse than what we've got instead of just seeing into that realm. So, I'll do the chant."

"Probably a good idea," Charlie muttered. "No Chthulu, please."

"You still have to be the one looking into the mirror, though, Charlie." Brigid glared at her. "You're the one with the energy that the spell needs to connect with the mirror in order to find the _right_ other realm."

"Got that part. So, we good to go, then?"

Brigid looked over to Lisa. "You're sure you're good? There's no reason you actually need to be part of this if you don't want to."

"This affects my son," Lisa said, straightening up and leaning forward from where she sat, mug still firmly in hand. "I'm not going anywhere."

Brigid nodded and extended a hand over the silver bowl, chanting softly from her book.

It didn't sound like anything Charlie had ever heard, so she was pretty sure her pronunciation would've been way off.

The mixture in the bowl—Charlie supposed it qualified as a potion at this point—started to swirl clockwise, the mugwort and dream root creating a spiral dotted with the moonstone extract as the actual moonstones began to glow. The light grew slowly and as it began to spill out into the room, Charlie heard Lisa gasp.

A tendril of light headed right for the nearest window, climbing up along its frame and across the top to continue along the wall. It traced out every object in its path, continuing around the room until it got back to the first window. It followed the outline of the window frame till it reached the point where it had started, then shot back into the potion, which flashed, making Charlie shield her eyes. When she looked again, it had settled back to a more mellow glow again.

"Using three fingers," Brigid said, "paint some of the oil onto the mirror. Start from the center and work your way out clockwise."

Scrunching up her nose, Charlie followed Brigid's directions. The potion was cool, and the glow seemed to disappear from the oil as she removed her fingers from it. Once she touched the mirror, however, the glow was back, lighting up the mirror as she spread the oil onto it. She held her breath as she spiraled it out wider and wider, finishing along the edge.

"Breathe, already," Brigid said.

When she did, the light intensified for a second, then settled back to the sort of eerie glow you see on weird fungus in the woods at night.

"Now keep your eyes on it," Brigid said. "It doesn't matter if your eyes go out of focus. In fact, sometimes that's better."

"Stare at a glowy screen till my eyes glaze over. Yeah. I think I can do that." Charlie squared her shoulders and settled in to see what she could see.

~*~

Sam had had to shepherd civilians plenty of times before, but wrangling a caravan of teenagers down I94 was definitely a first. At first, they stuck together just fine. They were spooked, after all.

He wondered what, if anything, the cops had told Eric's mother.

Now that they'd been on the road for almost an hour, though, they were clearly getting antsy. Alex had called him twice in the last ten minutes asking if they could please just stop at the next rest area, but he'd stood firm. It wasn't that far of a drive, and he didn't want any chance of them getting split up.

What that was going to mean once they got back to the town where all the rest of the vics had gone missing was a question he hadn't found an answer for yet. He didn't think rounding them all up at Lisa's was feasible. But even knowing Ben was the likely target didn't help anything. This... thing hadn't been able to hone in on him yet, so clearly it wasn't exactly precise. He hoped Charlie might have come up with some more information by the time they got there.

His phone rang again. He thumbed the answer icon and barked, "No, Alex, we're not making a pit stop, okay? We've only got another half hour or so to go. Nobody's bladder's gonna explode."

"Uh, okay, Dad," Dean said.

Sam rolled his eyes.

"Care to give me an update, Sammy? What the hell is going on there?"

"Kinda hard to do a full report right now," he said, turning off speakerphone and putting the phone to his ear. "I mean, it's going okay at the moment, other than trying to herd cats."

"But you did say Alex, right? As in Alex-Alex?"

"Yeah. Apparently, she's considering UMich for next year. Or she was. Not so sure after this."

"I guess not. Ben with you?"

"Of course."

"Bet he's not planning on going there anymore either."

"Uhhh..." Sam glanced in the rearview mirror. "Actually, I think he's got a stubborn streak."

"Yeah, yeah, he always did." Dean sounded wistful.

Damnit. Sam didn’t need to be worrying about Dean’s issues right now.

"Right now, I'm working on getting these kids home," Sam said. "Garth's gonna make sure Alex gets the rest of the way back to Jody."

"Good, good." Dean sighed. "Any more ideas on what this thing is?"

"Kinda. Can't say right now though."

"You managed not to give the kids the talk? Wow. Well, you're doing better than Charlie on that front."

Ouch. That had to have been tough on both of them.

"Cas says he can restore their memories, which I think Lisa wants." Dean went quiet for a second. "He also said he added some protections for them. Kinda like he did for us with the rib-calligraphy? Did that too. Dunno if either of them needed any x-rays after that, but I'm guessing that would've taken some explaining, so probably not."

"That... could kind of explain a lot, actually." Sam glanced back at Ben again. He was obviously doing his best to eavesdrop while trying not to look like that was what he was doing. "Maybe that's why things have been circling around the way they have been."

"Dude, now you're just being downright cryptic. But yeah, that's kind of why I mentioned it. Jesus, Sam. I should've been there."

"You know that couldn't have worked."

"Then Cas could've gone without me! It's not like we're getting anything accomplished here."

"You're not exactly right around the corner, Dean, and it's not like he could get here any faster than you." The phone beeped and Sam pulled it away from his ear to see who was calling now. "Okay, Dean, well, this time it is Alex, so I'm gonna let you go."

"Fine. Just... look out for them. Please."

"You know I will."

"I know."

Sam sighed and swiped the screen to answer the other call. "Still not making a pit stop, Alex."

It was going to be a long... twenty-five more minutes.

~*~

 

Scrying was the boringest magic ever. Once you got used to the glowy black mirror, it was all about waiting for something to show up.

Nothing was showing up.

"Maybe it just can't work without the full moon." There had to be a reason that was when you were supposed to do it, right?

"Just a little longer," Brigid said. "If we don't have to wait two days for answers, let's not wait two days for answers."

"Can't argue that." Didn't mean she didn't want to argue that. Just that she didn't actually have a decent argument other than the fact this was boring.

The glowiness was still there, sort of. It drifted back and forth across the mirror, sometimes pausing for half a sec in some kind of shape that looked tantalizingly solid, but then... nah. It just swirled around into new abstract patterns. She supposed it was hypnotic, in a way. Maybe she just didn't have what it took to trance out and actually see stuff. Or maybe they needed an actual full moon instead of all this moonstone add-on stuff. Or maybe wherever she'd been didn't want to be seen because whatever came along for the ride was who they really meant to send through.

In general, Charlie loved maybes. They kept things interesting. Situations like this? Not so much.

"Ben says they'll be here in another ten minutes or so," Lisa said softly.

Brigid sighed. "Guess we'd better call it, then."

The glow swirled into what almost looked like a face, one Charlie felt like she could probably recognize if it would actually give her the whole picture instead of barely a silhouette. Then it simply stopped and dimmed. Charlie's eyes shot to Brigid, who had one hand extended over the potion bowl and was doing something that calmed the glow down until it was gone.

"What are you doing? I almost had it!"

"We're going to have to try this again Tuesday," Brigid said. "Meanwhile, did you get anything at all?"

"I mean, it was starting to look like a face," Charlie said. "Kind of?"

Brigid shook her head. "They’ll be here soon. Kind-of-a-face isn’t enough to start back up for. Any chance Ben’s been messing around with stuff he shouldn't?" Brigid asked Lisa. "Kids his age do, sometimes. Usually nothing happens, but sometimes someone actually manages to summon something."

"I don't think so," Lisa said. "I mean, every parent probably thinks they know their kid better than they do, but I can't see Ben messing around with magic. He's pretty concrete, you know? Even thinks my yoga stuff is too woo-woo for him, though he doesn't say it."

"So as far as we know," Charlie said, "his last contact with weirdness was after his eighth birthday, with the changelings, right?"

"But you said those changelings were killed, would different ones even know where to look? I mean, we moved and everythying,” Lisa said.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Brigid said.

"Let me try something." Charlie picked up her phone and opened up the conversation she'd had with Cas. A horrible idea had just occurred to her. She tapped out a few words, just so it wouldn't look completely ridiculous, and silently prayed to him, recapping everything so far up to and including the question.

Her phone rang.

"Charlie, I'm already on my way there. Even if Dean hadn't insisted... I am responsible for at least a portion of this."

Well, that was kinda true for Lucifer's baby, too, apparently, but they'd been running out of leads, so she couldn't really argue, especially with an audience.

"You texting and driving?"

"Of course not, that is why I called you. Though as a celestial being, I am capable of true multitasking, unlike humans."

"I'm sure the cops would buy that when they pulled you over," Charlie pointed out.

"Which is why I do not engage in the practice." He was silent for a moment, then, "To your question, I don't think there is likely to be a connection between removing Lisa’s and Ben’s memories and current events. Everything that impacted Lisa and Ben at that time resulted from my partnership with Crowley. Nothing you have shared thus far suggests demonic involvement."

"No, that's one thing that it doesn't seem to be," Charlie agreed. "What about the earlier thing with the changelings? I know that's before you were... around."

"I have been around for millennia, Charlie. I thought you knew that."

"I meant _here_." She hoped he caught her emphasis and understood that she meant on Earth, not in Michigan, though she supposed they both worked for the moment.

"Oh. In that case, yes, that incident was prior to the mission to rescue Dean from perdition. However, I am familiar with that chapter of the Winchester Gospels." He scoffed and muttered something that ended with the word "prophet."

"And?"

"And I believe that you and Sam have independently arrived at the most likely conclusion: changelings are, in fact, from a faerie realm, and they do not take kindly to having their kin murdered and their prey stolen."

"So why not go after Dean and Sam?" Charlie looked up and saw both Lisa and Brigid studying her intently. "Why Ben?"

"They are well warded against perception by most things, even when not in the Impala or the Bunker. Even though I warded both Lisa and Ben, a child formerly captured by a changeling would have a distinct energy signature. Also, the warding I gave them both was very broad. It might not be completely effective against fae."

"And you didn't think to fix that when you were... cleaning up the rest of everything?"

"It did not seem pertinent at the time." He made a disgusted noise that Charlie was pretty sure he'd picked up from Dean. "Believe me, I am no happier than you are with the inadequacy of my actions."

"Time for that conversation later," Charlie said. "Meantime, how do we ward Ben and, apparently, anyone who's had contact with him specifically against changelings? And assuming we do that, does this thing just go after one of the other kids? Because that's not okay either."

"It would be more expedient to simply eliminate the current threat. That will give sufficient time to protect all of the children from future threat, starting with Ben."

"You left out an important piece there. _How_ do we eliminate it? And how do we even know it's what we're dealing with? It projects illusions at us, Cas."

"But you noted that it projected different illusions to different people," he pointed out. "If you discover that is occurring, that would be rather compelling evidence."

"And we kill it how?"

"Decapitation should, at a minimum, substantially incapacitate it. You will remember that works even for Leviathan, though it does not kill them."

"So, kill the head?"

"Kill the head,” Cas agreed. “Once I am there, I will attempt to smite it, though it depends somewhat upon which realm it hails from as to whether that will work. If you encounter it before I arrive, attempt to keep the head and body well removed from one another in the meantime."

"I didn't exactly come back with a broadsword, but yeah, I get it. We'll figure something out."

"I will be there as soon as this vehicle and my ability to avoid police entanglements allow."

"Holding you to that," Charlie said before hanging up. She looked over at Lisa and Brigid again.

All of the potion ingredients had been packed away into a drawstring bag that Brigid had brought, along with the mirror. She handed it to Charlie to put into her own bag. She wondered if the moonstone oil and all that were still in there, or if she wasn't expected to need them when she tried this again Tuesday.

"So, he thinks it's related," Lisa said.

"Not to the memory loss, no, but the changelings, yeah."

"And the plan is 'kill the head'?" Brigid asked.

"At least until he gets here. He may be able to... do more than we can."

Brigid raised an eyebrow, and Charlie realized she was going to have to spell this part out.

"He's an angel. Like, a real one."

She had to give Brigid credit for not looking completely incredulous, just that one eyebrow went higher.

"And he's driving? Can't he just fly here?"

"That's a whole other story that involves no angels being able to fly these days. Well, there could be exceptions." She had no idea what Lucifer's status was. Obviously he hadn't been in heaven when the rest were cast out, and if his own wings had been damaged when _he_ was cast out, well, he'd had a few millennia to heal. But adding Lucifer into the conversation was definitely not going to simplify... anything.

"Right, I guess." Brigid shook her head. “So, what…?”

Just then, a car pulled into the driveway and Charlie heard a bunch of feet clatter up the front steps.

Show time.

~*~

Lisa could hardly contain herself when Ben came through the front door. She pulled him into a tight hug, swallowing back the tears that threatened to fall.

"Uh, Mom? It was just a couple of days," he said.

"You know that's not what this is." She gave him an extra squeeze and let go, looking up at Sam and the other kids on her front porch. "Why is everyone here?"

"This thing seems to be going after anyone connected to Ben," Sam said. "Didn't seem like a good idea to separate them until we get it."

"Of course. Well, come in." Lisa stepped back and let them all troop in. Sam, she noticed, herded them towards the living room.

"Can't we go upstairs and play Zelda Breath of the Wild or something?" Ben asked.

"Unless your room's as big as the living room," Charlie said, "this really is the most defensible position."

"Who're you?" Ben asked.

"Right. Uh, Ben, this is my... friend, Charlie." Lisa gestured to the gaggle of kids. "Charlie, this is Ben and his friends, and... I think we met on Skype. Alice, was it?"

"Alex," the brunette said. She turned to Sam, "You sure I can't just keep going? Meet this Garth guy on the road?"

"No," Sam said. "You were on Ben's team this weekend. Your energy signature probably reeks of him to this thing, and I am not explaining to Jody why you've gone missing."

That sounded like it had a story behind it, not least because Lisa was pretty sure she'd heard an unspoken "again" in there.

Sam dropped his duffel bag and pulled a smaller bag out of it.

"Iron filings," he said. "If this thing is what we're thinking, iron should repel it. Or possibly it'll be forced to count all the little pieces."

He shrugged and began pouring the filings along the border of the living room. It gave Lisa a creepy sort of deja vu.

"What else you got there, quartermaster?" Charlie asked, kneeling to peer into the duffel. She pulled out a pistol and jammed it into her waistband with a practiced ease Lisa would never have suspected. Next, out came a crowbar, which she tossed to Lisa.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"If it's from a faerie realm, iron should burn it," Sam explained. "If it's some kind of spirit, it should temporarily dissipate it. So just... swing at it."

"That, I think I can do. Aim for the head?"

"Probably doesn't matter with that," Charlie said. "It won't kill it, anyway. So just, whatever is in reach. There's not enough in here to arm everyone, Winchester."

"Pretty sure arming a bunch of scared kids would be a bad plan anyway." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Although Ben should have something."

"Like this?"

Lisa turned to see her son brandishing the poker from the fireplace.

"Actually, yeah." Sam nodded with a little half smile. "You've got good instincts kid."

"You said iron hurts it." He shrugged. "Kinda obvious."

"Ben's top of his class," Lisa said, hoping she didn't sound too much like the typical bragging mother. "He's gonna be an engineer."

Sam's smile widened. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then snapped it shut as something thudded outside. "Charlie, you grab the other door. Lisa, Ben, stay close to the others, and keep your eyes on the windows."

Lisa nodded, herding the rest of the kids into the center of the room and then putting her back to them, eyes on the window closest to Sam's end of the room. Her eyes darted to her left, where Ben stood similarly positioned, jaw set and eyes on the window on that end of the room.

"Maybe it was just a raccoon," said one of the kids in the middle of the room.

"It's not a raccoon," said another. "It's the thing that got Eric!"

"He probably just got stoned and wandered off," said another. "I mean, seriously, faeries? This is stupid!"

"Would you be any more scared if I said it was vampires?" Alex asked. "'Cause they're real too."

"Nobody asked you, Buffy. Look, I gotta go to the bathroom..."

The window in front of Ben exploded inward with a gust of air that filled the room with the smell of jasmine, roses, and things nobody in this world had probably ever seen or smelled. Lisa lunged towards Ben to pull him away as the line of iron filings blew away like dust. He took a step back, still thrusting the poker out in front of him as a stream of smoke poured towards him, tendrils separating out like serpentine fingers.

Lisa's hand landed on his shoulder. She was startled when Charlie's hand closed over hers.

The streams of smoke spread wide and circled around all three of them. Lisa swung her tire iron at it, but it just went through like a knife through warm butter. A gun fired. Someone screamed. It might have been her.

Everything went black.


	8. Chapter 8

The first thing she noticed was the smell of flowers, weird but familiar somehow. It was thick and smothering and made Charlie want to let the murky gray pull her back under. Then she heard the screaming.

“Don’t you dare! Give me back my son!”

Lisa.

Charlie forced her eyes open.

“It’s ok, Mom,” Ben said. “I’ll be back, I promise.”

Rowena… no, not Rowena. Changeling-thing. It had its back to her and a firm grip on Ben’s arm. Ben looked like he’d already gone three rounds with it, bruises splattered across his face and arms. He was hugging his free arm across his chest, too. Charlie thought he probably had some broken ribs.

Behind them was a portal. That was the only word for the shimmery oval surrounded by glowing glyphs that showed some kind of forest scene. It looked beautiful, but it was also definitely not Earth. Or Oz. Charlie had never seen some of the colors those leaves were, and her eyes kept trying to resolve them into either purples or oranges when they were nothing like either of those.

This side of the portal, though, was some kind of dark room. Basement from the musty smell of it and cracked cement floor. Her hands were empty, and she just barely stopped herself from reaching behind her for the gun she’d just had. It was long gone. So far, not-Rowena didn’t seem to realize she was awake. Now she just had to figure out how to use that to her advantage.

Lisa launched herself forward and tried to grab Ben from the Changeling, scratching furiously at the thing’s face when she couldn’t break its grip. Charlie took that as her cue and pushed herself up into a crouch. She lunged towards Ben while Lisa had the Changeling distracted. His eyes shot wide open, but he didn’t make a noise when she tackled him, just let himself go limp.

It would’ve been a good move. Against a human. For a second, it even seemed like it might have worked, as Charlie’s momentum and Ben’s dead weight dragged him down towards the floor.

The ricochet was a bitch.

Charlie flew backwards and landed on her ass, skidding until she fetched up against a wall.

“Mom!”

Charlie looked over and saw Lisa fly sideways into the opposite wall with a thud before falling to the floor, face down. She didn’t move.

“Lisa!” Charlie forced herself back to standing and ran to her. She scrambled to find a pulse at her throat, only letting herself breathe once she felt its faint pressure under her fingertips. She brushed Lisa’s hair away from her face.

Bun grunted, and Charlie’s eyes snapped back to the Changeling just as it shoved him through the portal. He collapsed into the foliage on the other side just as the portal winked out, now nothing but a blank space on the wall with fading symbols showing where it had once been.

“You bitch!” Charlie yelled. “Bring him back! Bring them all back!”

“I don’t think so,” it said in Rowena’s sickly-sweet voice. “No, I think that child is finally right where he belongs. He’ll make a much better meal now, too.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Charlie said, standing up and brushing herself off. “You really have no idea the kind of hell that’s going to rain down on you for messing with him.”

“Do tell,” it said. “Abomination you may be, but I believe you have just demonstrated how completely… ineffective you are against one such as me.”

“Abomination?” Charlie took a step to the side.

“You do not belong here,” it said.

“Funny. Kinda thought you brought me here.”

It clucked its tongue and rolled its eyes. “Not this _building_. This _world_. You reek of death and the magic of other realms.”

“Yeah, well you reek of… flowers.” Charlie scowled. She took another step to the side and then one backwards.

It turned its back on her and began tracing new symbols on the wall, each glowing faintly as it was finished.

Charlie took another step and almost turned her ankle on something. She kept her eyes on the Changeling and slowly bent her knees to reach down for whatever it was. Her fingers touched something long, rounded, cool, and metallic just before it whipped away from her to clatter against a wall.

“I don’t think so, Charlene,” the Changeling said. It waved its hand at her, and Charlie found herself frozen in her half-squatted position, invisible ropes or chains of some kind wound tightly around her. “No, I think you have been quite enough of a pain in my arse as it is.”

It was really freaky how it managed to get Rowena’s look, her accent, and from what little Charlie knew of her, her mannerisms.

“Oh, but you know her quite well, don’t you?” it asked. “After all, she recognized how very alike the two of you were right from the start.”

_Let me tell you about you... I read you the minute I saw you._

Charlie shook off the memory. She’d already known this thing could probably read minds. No point feeding it stuff. “She thought she did. She didn’t know me at all. She was just an annoying bitch.”

“If you say so, dear.” It kept drawing. “Now, you can’t come back to my world with me, but I dare say you shouldn’t remain here either. Not only would you try to do some daft, heroic thing to save the boy, but this world’s energy signature is unstable enough without you adding to it.”

“So, what, you’re some kind of interdimensional cop, now?” Charlie struggled to get at least a hand free, but the bonds tightened around her.

“There’s no point in trying to escape, you know,” it said. The symbols were glowing more brightly now. As each one was completed, the whole set lit up a bit more. “I will find you now that I have your scent. There is nowhere you can hide from me.”

Charlie tried to make out what any of the symbols were. They looked like nothing she’d seen, though, not even in the _Book of the Damned_ or the _Codex_.

“Oh, now there are a couple of things that shouldn’t be in the hands of such an inferior species. I shall have to secure those as well before I return home.”

Charlie cursed under her breath. _Don’t think of stuff it shouldn’t know!_

“In the meantime, you, my dear, are going to the one place from which nothing and no one ever returns.”

“Space jail?” Charlie asked. The space between the symbols seemed to be turning black, except not like any black Charlie had ever seen. It was blacker than the scrying mirror. Blacker than a moonless night. It was just… nothing.

A few feet away, Lisa stirred. Charlie thought of the most recent _Doctor Who_ episode. _Time Cop_. _Fellowship of the Ring_ for good measure.

“It is no use trying to distract me by filling your mind with nonsense,” it said. “What exactly do you hope to accomplish by it?”

“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra,” Charlie spat. “Shaka, when the walls fell. Hermione in the Ministry of Magic.”

Lisa was awake and looking at her now, the length of pipe Charlie had tried to grab earlier just a foot or two away from her.

“Leia versus Jabba on the sail barge.”

Lisa nodded.

The Changeling drew another symbol. The oval was almost complete again, and the void beyond it looked menacing in a way that nothing shouldn’t be able to do.

Charlie kept on rattling off everything that came to mind. “What an amazing smell you’ve discovered, Your Highness. I may not be able to carry the ring, but I’ll carry you. Expelliarmus!”

Lisa scrambled up, grabbed the pipe and ran at the Changeling, swinging the pipe like a baseball bat at its head. No, over it. Far over it.

Charlie winced.

“Rowena” stumbled and Lisa swung again. Blood spattered from the thing’s nose and mouth and it fell to its knees.

Charlie’s eyes shot wide open at that.

“Is this where my son is?” Lisa demanded, pointing at the portal but never taking her eyes off the space above the thing’s head.

“He’s where he belongs,” it replied, waving a hand at Lisa, eyes widening as nothing happened.

The chains holding Charlie loosened. She wriggled a bit, and they didn’t tighten back up.

“He belongs here,” Lisa retorted. She looked between the Changeling and the portal and took a step towards the nothingness. Nothingness that… flickered?

“Lisa, no!” Charlie got a hand loose and used it to try to widen the gap around it, quickly freeing her arm to the elbow.

The portal flickered again. And again. Behind it, what Charlie could see was changing like someone rapidly clicking through tv channels. There wasn’t time to take in what was on the other side, but it wasn’t nothing anymore. There were deserts, cities, waterfalls, beaches, forests. More and more forests.

“He belongs to us!” the thing spat, struggling to stand back up. Its image flickered, and for a second, Charlie thought she saw Dean.

The portal seemed to have locked on a single place now, all the glyphs around it burnt out and the glow turning vaguely purple or possibly picking up the not-purples and not-oranges of the forest behind it.

“He belongs to himself,” said another voice. A familiar voice.

Now the thing cowering before Lisa didn’t look like Rowena, didn’t look like Dean. Didn’t look human. It looked more like a blob of ink the size of a Great Dane, writhing in the air as if fighting the exact chains that fell away from Charlie.

Charlie stumbled to catch her balance, and not just because the invisible chains weren’t holding her any longer. On the other side of the portal stood a very familiar figure, otherworldly face framed in perfect ringlets.

“Gilda,” she breathed.

“Greetings, Charlie,” Gilda said with a smile. She extended a hand, and the blob of ink shimmered and faded into nothing. Her smile faded. “While I cannot regret returning you to your world, I am deeply sorry that this siabhra followed you and has caused such trouble.”

“You… what?” Charlie shook her head.

“Charlie?” Lisa asked. “Who is this? Does she have Ben?”

Charlie supposed the thing to do now was to introduce them. But how, exactly, did you introduce your current weekend fling to your… things with Gilda had never even gotten far enough to call her an ex, she supposed, though maybe the Fae would think otherwise. All she managed was a noise that sounded vaguely like it was trying to be a word and a shaky spread of her arms.

“Yes.” Gilda’s smile returned. “Your son is here, as are the others that the siabhra took from your world.”

The air beside Gilda shimmered and a small group of people appeared. Charlie recognized most of them from the missing person photos. Ben was at the front of the group, no longer black and blue.

“Mom!” he yelled, lunging forward.

Gilda caught hold of his arm.

“Hey!” Lisa yelled.

Gilda raised a hand and traced shapes in the air, then stepped through the portal, bringing Ben with her. She stopped halfway through, planting one foot in the filthy basement and leaving the other on the floor of her forest. She guided all the very confused-looking humans as they stumbled through.

Ben ran to Lisa and threw his arms around her. Lisa pulled him tight, and Charlie saw tears streaming down her cheeks before she buried her face in Ben’s hair.

The rest of the people quickly put as much distance as they could between themselves and the portal, clustering themselves at the base of the stairs Charlie hadn’t seen before now. Interestingly, none of them moved to climb the steps.

Charlie turned her attention back to Gilda. She stepped closer to the portal and asked, “So, you saved me?”

“I did what I could,” Gilda said. “I told you that the Hollow Forest was in your debt.”

“But how…?”

Gilda shook her head. “This will not hold for long. Something is changing the energy signature of your world. Would that you could have remained in mine, but your soul does not belong in my world any more than mine in yours.”

“Thank you?” Charlie tried.

Gilda shook her head again. “The Hollow Forest remains in your debt, and in that of your beloved, for subduing the siabhra to be returned to us for justice.”

Charlie turned to look at Lisa. Her beloved? Seemed like an overstatement, but she didn’t hate it. Huh.

“You wield the magic-banishing metal well,” Gilda said, now speaking to Lisa. “You are truly as brave as your queen.”

Lisa’s eyebrows shot up and her eyes darted to Charlie.

“Oh, I’m not really a…”

The air around Gilda shimmered.

“I must go.” She smiled again at Charlie, this time sadly. “May your life with your beloved be filled with joy and peace.”

And then she was gone, leaving Charlie to gape after her.

Behind them, heavy boots clattered down the stairs and people cried out. Charlie whipped around to see Lisa had lifted the pipe like a bat again and the missing people were moving to huddle behind her. She couldn’t blame them. Sam charging in, gun drawn, was pretty terrifying.

“It’s ok,” she managed. “Sam, it’s over.”

“You sure that’s Sam?” Lisa asked, still not setting down the pipe.

Sam lowered his gun, set it on the floor, and stood, shoulders stooped and hands raised.

“Agent Page?” Ben asked, his voice small but surprisingly steady.

Charlie went over to Lisa and set a hand gently on her shoulder. She slid her hand along Lisa’s arm, encouraging her to lower her weapon as well.

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “I am.


	9. Chapter 9

Sam had apparently left Alex in charge of the other kids at Lisa’s house. Considering she’d mobilized the rest to clean up the broken glass and duct tape a sheet over the window—“We couldn’t find anything plastic. Hope it doesn’t rain.”—Lisa decided that had been a good choice. 

Ben seemed pretty impressed too, which made Lisa raise an eyebrow. This girl was on her way home to South Dakota, and it would be at least a year before they might see each other again. She hoped Ben wasn’t on his way to getting his heart broken.

Like she had any room to say anything on that subject.

Sam graciously transported Eric and the other kids home while Charlie (Agent Ridley Scott? Really?) spun a story for the adults who thought they’d been gone for maybe a day instead of a couple of weeks. It involved domestic terrorism and hallucinogens and made just about enough sense for people who’d apparently been in a faerie realm to believe. At least, it would keep them from all ending up committed.

Ben, meanwhile, was working with Alex on replacing the sheet over the window with stuff from his latest project. It involved more nails and screws than the landlord would probably like, but Lisa thought they’d feel more secure tonight, so she didn’t say anything.

“We need to call the cops,” Lisa finally said. “Let them know everyone’s back.”

“Or just get them home to their families,” Charlie replied. “Cops… local cops will have a ton of questions. They’ve waited this long. They can wait until morning.”

Lisa’s stomach dropped. Right. Charlie wasn’t a real agent, so she couldn’t deal with the actual cops. And could probably never show her face in this town again. 

“Agent Scott,” she said, “are you sure the local cops really have all the relevant information? I mean, this was a pretty classified thing, right? Or whatever you’d call it?”

“Our… division does keep a lot of information need to know,” Charlie agreed warily. “The locals probably aren’t going to be real happy we haven’t kept them in the loop.”

“Hey, I’m just glad we’re back,” Kathy said. “If you’re trying to ask us to keep you out of it, I’m good with that. I just want to get home to my family.”

“Same here,” Matt said. “Considering how much sense none of this makes anyway, I don’t actually need to have half the high school asking me about meeting real _X-Files_ agents.”

Janice and Emily nodded their agreement.

Alex volunteered to drive them all home so they wouldn’t have to wait for Sam to get back, and Ben promptly volunteered to go with. Oh yeah, he was in as much trouble as Lisa was.

And then Lisa and Charlie were alone. For a long minute, they just stared at each other.

“I’m sorry…” Charlie started.

“Thank you…” Lisa started at the same time.

They both stopped. Lisa decided that standing in the middle of the recently un-wrecked living room was stupid and flopped down onto the couch. Charlie joined her.

“You’re the one who saved the day,” Charlie said. “Saved me, anyway. Looks like Gilda would’ve saved everyone else, but if that she-vra thing had already… yeah.”

“I can’t believe it worked,” Lisa said. “Who knew some old pipe would work when iron didn’t. Didn’t you say it’s iron they hate?”

Charlie shrugged. “Far as I knew. Gonna have to check out that pipe to see what it was made of. That house is pretty old. Lead, maybe?”

“You’re going back there?” Lisa asked, incredulous.

“I threw the pipe in Sam’s trunk,” Charlie said.

“Oh.”

“And, I am sorry, Lisa.” Charlie winced and ran her fingers through her hair. The fiery curls were disheveled and dirty, and Lisa just wanted to comb her own fingers through them. “It does sound like I was the only reason that thing was here and going after Ben.”

“It’s not like you brought it on purpose,” Lisa pointed out. She still couldn’t quite wrap her brain around the explanation that faerie-woman had given. “What did she mean about the forest being in your debt? And calling you queen?”

“Yeah, that’s… tl/dr version: I was _playing_ a queen in this game, a moron used actual magic and enslaved Gilda, and I kind of… rescued her.” Charlie’s cheeks flushed to match her hair. 

“So, when you… died… she rescued you?”

“Apparently? I wish she’d had more time to explain that part. I mean, it’s not like it’s the first time it’s happened since I rescued her.” Charlie’s nose wrinkled. “Although, I was in the bunker that time, so maybe whatever spell told her I’d died _this_ time couldn’t reach her?”

“I’m just going to smile and nod and pretend that made sense,” Lisa decided. Among other things, that made it easier to ignore the fact that Charlie had just admitted to dying more than once. That idea set Lisa’s guts churning. Once was bad enough.

“Probably a good idea,” Charlie agreed.

Lisa decided that was going to be her policy on asking why the woman had referred to her as Charlie’s “beloved,” too. Charlie probably didn’t know, and Lisa wasn’t sure what her take on it would be. 

“She was right about how brave you were,” Charlie said, as if she’d been reading Lisa’s mind. “Going after that she-vra with nothing but some old pipe when everything we’d tried that was supposed to work didn’t.”

Lisa shrugged. “Didn’t feel brave. Desperate, maybe?”

“I’m not sure anyone ever feels brave,” Charlie said. “The trick is not letting the bad guy know you’re terrified.”

A quiet moment passed.

“So, what happens now?” Lisa asked. “You going to have to leave?”

“I… don’t even know,” Charlie admitted. “Honestly, my planning so far only went up till the full moon on Tuesday and figuring out how I was back and what the consequences were going to be.”

“And now that you know?” Lisa wasn’t sure what answer she was hoping for. What was even reasonable to hope for? She kept her eyes on Charlie, who was twisting her fingers distractedly.

“Both Gilda and the she-vra said something about the energy of this whole world being wrong,” she said. “Gilda didn’t seem to think I was part of the problem. But… the case Sam and Dean have been working on could be.”

“Does that mean you’re going to work on it with them?”

“Not sure what I can do, really. Anything that would need me specifically, I can do from pretty much anywhere.” Charlie looked up at Lisa. “But then ‘anywhere’ becomes a target. I’m good at staying off the radar, but I’ve got a couple years of tech to catch up on.”

Lisa nodded, keeping her eyes on Charlie. Far as she could tell, Charlie had caught up just fine, but then, there was probably more sophisticated stuff she could do than Lisa had even seen.

“I’ll stick around at least until Cas gets here,” Charlie said. “I don’t know what getting those memories back is going to be like, but it would probably be good if you had someone around who wasn’t part of them.”

Lisa shivered. “Yeah. I mean, it’d be good to know what the hell happened. But I’m guessing it was pretty bad.”

“Probably.” Charlie winced.

Maybe what they needed while they waited was a bit of normalcy.

“So, we have some time to kill,” Lisa said, “and the kids actually cleaned the place up pretty well. What if we finish off that movie?”

A smile spread slowly across Charlie’s face. “Yeah. Why don’t we do that?”

This time, they started out holding hands on the couch. By the time Ben came home and peeked in at them, Charlie had her head on Lisa’s shoulder. His eyes had gone wide, but he hadn’t said anything, just gone right upstairs. By the time there was another knock at the door, the movie had ended and they were just rehashing their favorite parts.

Lisa wasn’t sure what she was expecting an angel to look like, but it definitely wasn’t some guy with messy hair in a suit and trench coat. That, however, was exactly who was standing on her front porch.

Charlie handled the introductions. Ben looked absolutely star-struck, and Lisa imagined she did as well. Sam excused himself, presumably to go call his brother. Dean. That name should probably feel like it meant something. She supposed it would soon.

“Can I offer you… I don’t know. Do angels drink coffee?” she asked, waving in the general direction of the kitchen.

“I do,” Castiel said. “Your offer is very hospitable, but unnecessary. I am here to put right something I should not have done.”

“Why did you?” she asked.

“I made many bad decisions that year,” Castiel admitted. “There is no higher purpose I can claim that would justify taking your memories. At the time, it seemed a kindness. Clearly, however, it was not.”

Lisa shook her head. There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that.

“I believe that you and Ben should sit down,” Castiel said, gesturing towards the couch.

They did, and Castiel came to stand before and between them.

“Is there some kind of spell we have to say?” Ben asked.

His voice only trembled a little, and Lisa smiled with pride in spite of herself.

“No,” Castiel replied. “There are only two words that need to be said: I’m sorry.”

With that, he rested a hand on each of their heads.

Images, sounds, smells, and feelings flooded Lisa’s mind. Dean. She recognized him now. Relived the weekend they’d met. When he’d crashed Ben’s party. When he’d showed up on her doorstep, broken with grief. When they’d shared the best year of her life. When she’d told him not to come back.

She remembered the “home invasion.” Watched Matt being killed and cast aside like he was nothing. Felt that demon possessing her, saying horrible things to Ben. Pain lanced through her abdomen as the demon forced her to stab herself. 

She saw Dean exorcising the demon anyway. Dean telling her they’d been in a car accident, that he’d lost control and hit her and Ben. She supposed that was even sort of true, from his point of view.

She felt tears on her cheeks. She reached out for Ben’s hand and gripped it tightly. Next thing she knew, he was in her arms, sobbing into her shoulder, and she was whispering soothing nonsense to him.

She could see why Dean thought she’d be better off not remembering. But he hadn’t asked what she thought about it. Neither had this angel, who admitted he’d been wrong. They were both going to be better off remembering. She knew that. But right now, she was tempted to ask Castiel to take it all away again. She didn’t know how she was going to be strong for Ben when she felt like she was going to explode with the pain of these memories.

“Lisa.”

Her eyes shot open, and she saw Charlie standing there. Castiel was gone. Lisa reached for Charlie’s hand and pulled her down onto the couch with them. Charlie wrapped her arms awkwardly around Lisa as Lisa held Ben. Leaning into the embrace, Lisa allowed herself to sob along with Ben.

~*~

Cas had promised not to go far unless he had to resume the search for the woman carrying Lucifer’s baby. Charlie thought it probably was for the best that he’d left for now, but hoped Lisa and Ben would get a chance to talk to him once they were up for talking again. She thought all three of them probably needed it.

She’d held Lisa as she’d cried her heart out, careful to hold only her. Ben didn’t know her from a hole in the wall, and what he needed was his mom. Eventually, they’d both cried themselves out, and Charlie had gotten them both upstairs. 

Ben just went into his room, shut the door softly, and didn’t come back out. That seemed about right for a teenaged boy, though Charlie was a little worried about him being alone. He wasn’t sobbing anymore, so she counted that as a win.

Lisa, on the other hand, looked into her room and back at Charlie several times looking a bit lost. Finally, she asked, “Stay?”

So, she did. Neither of them did more than kick off their shoes before climbing under the covers. Charlie thought Lisa would probably regret that in the morning, but right now, getting some sleep was the priority.

It took them a bit to get comfortable. At first, Charlie lay on her back and cuddled Lisa to her, but then her arm had started to go to sleep. Then Lisa tried lying on her back, too, holding Charlie’s hand and doing some kind of yoga breathing exercise. Finally, Lisa rolled onto her side, and Charlie spooned up behind her, and that turned out to be the charm, with both of them falling asleep within minutes.


	10. Epilogue

Lisa hummed to herself as she pulled into the driveway, eyes widening as she saw Charlie’s car already there. This day just kept getting better and better. She killed the engine and hopped out, barely taking the time to click the lock before practically skipping up the steps, hardly noticing the nip in the air.

Once inside, she called out Charlie’s name as she tossed her keys into the dish on the counter. There was a pile of mail next to it, mostly pre-Thanksgiving store flyers. Nothing she needed to deal with just now.

“In the office!”

Lisa shrugged out of her jacket and hung it on its peg, set her bag down, and hurried through the living room to the little office area they’d sectioned off of it.

“You’re home.”

Charlie spun the chair around, hair swaying around her face as she stood up to give Lisa a kiss. She kept it quick but it was full of promise for later. Her lips tasted like coffee. “I’m home.”

Lisa held her close for a moment, then took a step back to sit on the beanbag next to the desk. It shifted under her weight as she moved around until she was comfortable. “So, how’d it go?”

“There may have been a slight werewolf issue,” Charlie admitted, sitting back down on the swivel chair, “but I really did spend most of my time getting Jody’s internet set up to keep them off the British douchebags’ radar and teaching them a few tricks.”

“There’s such a thing as a _slight_ werewolf issue?” Lisa asked as she pulled the easy chair closer. She congratulated herself on keeping her voice somewhat within normal range. It might have gone up a few notes but not, she thought, a full octave.

“There is when you’re in a house full of badass women,” Charlie replied with a grin. “Seriously, I barely saw the thing.”

“Uh huh.” Lisa took a breath and sighed it out. She was back in one piece, which was the main thing. “So, what’re you up to now?”

“Oh, you know.” Charlie shrugged. “The usual.”

That narrowed things down not at all, but Lisa didn’t bother to press it. She had news of her own.

“I got it,” she said.

“You got… you signed on the studio!” Charlie dove from the chair to straddle Lisa’s lap and kiss her again, this time cradling Lisa’s face in her hands.

Lisa buried her fingers in Charlie’s soft hair and deepened the kiss, pulling back only when she needed to catch her breath. She held Charlie where she was, though, so they stayed forehead-to-forehead. “I signed on the studio. I can start getting it set up next week, should be ready to start offering classes there in a month or so.”

“I knew you’d get it.” Charlie grinned.

“Wait, you didn’t…” Lisa relaxed her hold a bit so she could pull back and really look Charlie in the eye. Much as she’d appreciate the intent, she really didn’t want Charlie to have pulled any digital strings.

“No! This is all you.” Charlie sat back on her heels and Lisa’s knees. She held her hand up in the Vulcan salute. “Scout’s honor.”

Lisa laughed, relieved. She should’ve known Charlie wouldn’t interfere unless Lisa had asked her to.

“So, we’ve got lots to celebrate,” Charlie said. “Ben’s acceptance, early-decision and all. Your new studio.”

“And you being home,” Lisa added. “That’s always worth a celebration.”

“Well, yeah.” Charlie smirked. “I figured that went without saying.”

“Of course.” Lisa laughed. “So how are we celebrating?”

“For the G-rated portion of the day, I say pizza,” Charlie said.

“And from now until Ben gets home?” Lisa asked, eyebrow raised. “Should be at least another couple of hours.”

Charlie’s smile widened. She stood up, grabbed Lisa’s hands, and pulled her to her feet, dragging her towards the stairs. She didn’t have to drag very hard, because Lisa was just as eager.

_I dwell in the present moment, all right, and it is awesome._


End file.
